Patent ID: 7383196

Claim:
In a computerized patient records system operated for a healthcare institution which maintains written clinical guidelines, a method of operating active guidelines comprising the steps of a) on an active guidelines server, maintaining the clinical guidelines and also maintaining, associated with the clinical guidelines, active guideline tags containing information usable by the computerized patient records system to generate orders; b) at the station of a user, operating an active guidelines viewer in communication with the guidelines server, the active guidelines viewer including a web browser, an active guidelines interpreter and a URL router, i) the active guidelines interpreter receiving the active guidelines tags and converting the active guidelines tags into hyperlinks and passing the hyperlinks to the web browser, ii) the web browser receiving and displaying the hyperlink from the active guidelines interpreter for the user representing the active guideline; and c) when the user accepts a clinical guideline by invoking a hyperlink, the URL router receiving the active guideline tag associated with the invoked hyperlink and creating an action item from the active guideline tag to be sent to the computerized patient records system for implementation, the action item being processed by the computerized patient record system to create an order.