Towards a standard query model for sharing decision-support applications

Many clinical decision-support applications are created in a centralized manner, but distributed widely for local use. When such applications include queries to electronic patient databases, the queries must be translated to conform to local database specifications. Because no well-defined standard model of clinical data exists, the translation process is ad hoc, costly, and error-prone. In this paper, we propose an abstract formalism, called the Standard Query Model Framework, for specifying a standard clinical data model and for supporting the automated and reliable translation of queries that appear in shared decision-support applications. We present the components of this framework, discuss their desirable features, and describe a prototype that we have developed for relational patient databases. We also highlight the outstanding research issues relevant to our approach.