BXE2E: A bidirectional transformation approach for medical record exchange

Abstract

Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are complex data models and developing medical data import/export functions is a difficult, prone to error and hard to maintain process. Bidirectional transformation (bx) theories have been developed within the last decades as a mechanism for relating different data models and keeping them consistent with each other. We believe that medical record exchange is a promising industrial application case for applying bx theories and may resolve some of the interoperability challenges in this domain. We introduce BXE2E, a proof-of-concept framework which frames the medical record interoperability challenge as a bx problem, providing a real world application of bx theories. During our experiments, BXE2E reliably transforms medical records correctly and with reasonable performance. With BXE2E, we demonstrate a method of reducing the difficulty of creating and maintaining such a system as well as reducing the number of errors that may result. BXE2E’s design allows it to be easily integrated to other data systems that could benefit from bx theories.