Abstract
Communicating patient-specific diet information at any large medical institution is a complex process. The Johns Hopkins Hospital has chosen to automate the manual method of communicating this information. The development of the “Ward-Nutrition Communication Application” will allow users on an inpatient Nursing unit to order patient diets and other nutritional needs utilizing a multi-windowed, menu-based and mouse driven environment. This, and other applications, will run on high performance, diskless workstations from several nursing units on a pilot basis. The application described in this paper will expedite the communication of patient dietary information, decrease the amount of time currently required to perform the manual tasks, and introduce the utilization of workstation technology to novice users in a clinical setting.