Information systems in health care have developed to a stage where they play an important role in the daily functioning of the institution, as much for primary processes as for logistics and management. As an illustration, the present use of Integrated Hospital Information Systems (HIS) is presented. With the further evolution of the use of IT in health care in mind, the dependency of the institutions on their information system is explored. Two aspects are considered further in this paper : dependency on the availability of the services of the system and dependency on the supplier/vendor. The first aspect is well recognized in the literature, while the second receives less attention. Some suggestions are made for the set-up/architecture of information systems to reduce dependency on the supplier/vendor.
