Integrating healthcare-related information using the entity-attribute-value storage model

Abstract

For an optimal care of patients in home healthcare, it is essential to exchange healthcare-related information with other stakeholders. Unfortunately, paper-based documentation procedures as well as the heterogeneity between information systems inhibit a well-regulated communication. Therefore, a digital patient care record is introduced to establish the foundation for integrating healthcare-related information. To overcome the heterogeneity, standards for health information exchange such as HL7 CDA are used. This paper proposes a generic storage structure based on the entity-attribute-value (EAV) model for the patient care record. This approach offers flexibility concerning different standard types and the evolution in healthcare knowledge and processes. It also allows for highly sparsed data to be stored in a compact way. The underlying database structure is presented, the import process for extracting incoming reports is described and the export process for generating new outgoing standardized reports is briefly illustrated. First performance tests regarding the query response time are also given. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.