| Title | WWW-Based Applications for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit |
| Author(s) | Charles Y. Hu and Raymond G. Duncan |
| Source | Proceedings of the 1999 AMIA Annual Symposium, Pages 1082-1082 |
| ISBN | 1-56053-371-4 |
| Publisher | Hanley and Belfus, Inc. |
| Publication Date | Nov. 1999 |
| Abstract | The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is a data-intensive environment with many unique requirements.
Virtually every feeding, parenteral solution, and medication must be individually customized based on the
patient's weight, gestational age, lab results, and clinical condition. Additionally, values must be tracked over
weeks or months to assess nutritional status and to monitor for various complications of prematurity and its
therapies. Computerized decision-support applications can simplify the process of ordering drugs and solutions in the NICU and reduce the incidence of calculation errors. The World Wide Web (WWW) has made it possible to rapidly build and deploy such applications in a platform-independent manner. The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC) NICU has used such applications for over 20 years on a succession of platforms: CP/M, VAX, Apple Macintosh, and now WWW. Parallel versions of several WWW-based applications for the NICU were developed in both client-side JavaScript and server-side Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) to test performance and portability on a variety of WWW browsers. Certain of the applications were previously implemented in Microsoft Basic, VAX RDB, Apple HyperCard, or Symantec ThinkC. |