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Integration challenges of clinical information systems developed without a shared data dictionary.
Val N Hicken1, Sidney N Thornton, Roberto A Rocha
1Department of Medical Informatics, Inter Mountain Health Care, Salt Lake City, UT 84120, USA. lpvhicke@ihc.com
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
|September 14, 2004
Summary
Intermountain Health Care faces significant data integration challenges due to incompatible legacy systems. Only 17% of data elements across three systems showed compatible structures, impacting data quality and efficiency.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Clinical Data Management
- Electronic Health Records
Background:
- Legacy systems present persistent challenges for integrating clinical information across healthcare settings.
- Intermountain Health Care (IHC) has struggled with sharing data effectively due to disparate data systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify the extent of data element disparity across three independent systems at IHC.
- To identify implications of data incompatibility on data quality, patient safety, and operational efficiency.
Main Methods:
- A sample of data elements was selected from prenatal, labor and delivery, and newborn intensive care unit (NICU) systems.
- The structural compatibility of these data elements across the three systems was assessed.
Main Results:
- Only 17% of the sampled data elements exhibited compatible structures across all three systems.
- Significant disparities were noted in data granularity, missing data, and duplicate entries.
Conclusions:
- Data element incompatibility poses risks to data quality, medical error, integration costs, and clinician efficiency.
- Developing integrated longitudinal patient electronic medical records requires managing conceptual context and granularity retrospectively.