Bringing a WEB-based interface to a hospital information system.

The Hospital Information System at the MU Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital is a "home-grown" system written in MUMPS. The system has a "roll-and-scroll" user interface typical of terminal based systems from the 1970s and early 1980s. We are now introducing a new user interface that uses World Wide Web technology (HTML forms). Computers connected to the hospital's intranet can access the hospital system using the Web browser of the user's choice. The new user interface can run in parallel with the older interface (even on the same computer), and uses the same underlying database. This allows a smooth migration to the new interface which minimizes both user and programmer anguish. User acceptance has been good, and the ease and speed of development has been very promising.