In the spring of 1999, we entered into discussions with Systems Engineering Consultants Inc. (SEC, Inc.). SEC Inc. is an Ann Arbor based company and the vendor of clinical information systems. They have systems in the Trauma Burn, Intensive Care, and Emergency Rooms at the University of Michigan. After a series of demonstrations of their system and a description of their approach, we hired SEC, Inc. to do a work process analysis for the perioperative processes of the University of Michigan. This is standard procedure for SEC, Inc. in terms of pursuing a new business. The timing was good for us because it was at about that time that we realized most of the work associated with implementing a clinical information system had to do with how it would effect work processes and relatively little to do with the look of the computer screens.
After a thorough analysis of work processes, SEC, Inc. made a presentation to our department about our various business units and their priority with respect to our overall goals as well as an analysis that reflected the relative dysfunction of each business unit and process. Based on this, we established our priorities for the development and implementation of the perioperative system. MorCARE is actually a specialized configuration of the Prometheus™ database, the main product of SEC, Inc. The only part of the project that was truly a development effort was an intraoperative client and case based defaults
