Healthcare IT Glossary

healthcare IT solutions from Centriq

Acronym	Term	Meaning
IT	Information Technology	Blanket term meaning communications, computing and data storage technology
IM&T	Information Management & Technology	Blanket term meaning communications, computing and data storage technology
ICT	Information Computing Technology	Blanket term meaning communications, computing and data storage technology
---	Healthcare IT Infrastructure	Voice and data communications network, data storage, computer servers and users computers providing the foundation for enterprise applications ranging from a telephone through to Word Processors and MRI systems.
PACS	Picture Archival & Communication System	Industry accepted term used to identify a radiological image storage and distribution system based on filmless communications technology.
RIS	Radiology Information System	A system that provides the information management features that hospital Radiology departments need for daily business. Typically includes patient tracking, billing and administrative programs and also may include clinical features.
HIS /PAS	Hospital Information System / Patient Administration System	A system that provides the information management features that hospitals need for daily business. Typically includes patient records, patient tracking, billing and administrative programs and also may include clinical features.
DICOM	Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine	The industry standard for radiological image communications, an application-layer protocol that resides at the top several layers of the Open System Interconnect (OSI) reference model for data communications.
HL7	Hospital Level 7	The ANSI standard for information interchange between foreign systems in the healthcare industry. The "7" refers to the fact that the protocol is designed to address the 7th layer of the International Standards Organization's Open System Interconnect model (the application layer)
IHE	Integrated Healthcare Environment or Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise	Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) originated in the late 1990s in the United States during a concentrated action between radiologists and technical personnel to improve the interoperation of hospital information systems.
----	Imaging Modalities	Types of medical imaging systems. The best known and most common are X-Ray, CT (Computed Tomography), MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), Ultrasound, NM (Nuclear Medicine) and PET (Positron Emission Tomography).
LAN	Local Area Network	A computer communications system limited to no more than a few miles and using high-speed connections (10 to 1000 megabits per second). A short-haul communications system that connects computer systems in a building or group of buildings within a few square kilometres, including workstations, front-end processors, controllers, switches, and gateways.
WAN	Wide Area Network	A computer network covering a large geographical area, usually consisting of two or more LANs.
NIC	Network Interface Controller	Hardware device used to interface computer devices to an ethernet network.
R&D	Research and Development	Research into the development of new technology products. In the context of this web-site this relates to computer electronics and software. Development is the application of engineering and management skills to design and implement a product or sub-system using knowledge gained through research.