A new community-oriented network in Italy for the collection and processing of clinical and epidemiological information.

This study illustrates a project to implement a clinical information system based on a general practitioner's network covering the national territory. The project is important because there are no other such systems in operation in Italy. Moreover, as is well known, both the quality and the quantity of health information made available by the National Health Service are far from optimal. This community-oriented network enables end-users to share software for the management of outpatient clinics that is produced by Informedica Janssen and distributed throughout Italy to over 16,000 physicians. The features of potential participants in the network as well as the software they have adopted are described.