The Vendor–Customer Relationship

No off-the-shelf solution exists for electronic anesthesia record keeping and perioperative information management. Every AIMS is installed in a unique environ ment of equipment and hardware, software and network parameters, interconnected databases, and clinical workflow. Every vendor's AIMS, regardless of how highly developed and mature it is at the time of sale, requires reconfiguration and customiza tion to meet the needs of the customer's administrative and clinical end users. Therefore, every AIMS implementation project should have a designated Anesthesia Clinical Leader (ACL)—a clinically experienced physician or certified registered nurse anesthetist, who can accurately anticipate the extent to which the vendor's software must be modified to suit the users and to what extent the users must be asked to change their workflow patterns to accommodate the AIMS software. Assuming that adequate resources have been allocated for technical support of the AIMS, these decisions and the extent to which they are supported and adopted by the other users become the primary determinants of successful AIMS implementation and operation. Continuing cooperation and clear channels of communication between the vendor and the customer are necessary to optimize the“goodness of fit” between the vendor's product and the needs of the customer. Several basic areas that must be considered are discussed in detail in the following sections.