[Founding and development of the Croatian Health Information System].

Information systems, either computer or paper based, are the key to business effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare organizations. The rationale of starting a large healthcare informatics project by the Ministry of Health and Welfare may be argued by two needs: (1) the need of medical data transformation into the information required for public health policy decision-making; and (2) measures in the field of health and pharmacoeconomics, i.e.