Supporting the Health Quality Measures Format in i2b2

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Data Standards
• Computational Biology

Background:

• The Health Quality Measures Format (HQMF) is an HL7 standard crucial for computable clinical data queries.
• HQMF is increasingly important for quality measurement and population health research.
• National initiatives like Meaningful Use and Query Health support HQMF development and deployment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the structure of HQMF.
• To apply HQMF computation to the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) platform.
• To develop a translator between HQMF and i2b2-XML formats.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of the HQMF standard's structure.
• Implementation of a translator for converting between HQMF and i2b2-XML.
• Focus on the subset of HQMF supported by i2b2-XML, with future expansion planned.

Main Results:

• A translator was implemented to convert between HQMF and i2b2-XML.
• The translator supports a specific subset of HQMF within i2b2-XML.
• This translator is part of the QueryHealth initiative's reference implementation.

Conclusions:

• The developed translator facilitates the use of HQMF within the i2b2 platform.
• This work supports the integration of quality measurement and research data.
• The translator is freely available and contributes to the QueryHealth initiative.