HP Labs Technical Reports

Information Management in the Electronic Medical Record

De Smedt, Philippe; Fisk, Thomas B.

HPL-97-88

Keyword(s):Electronic Medical Record (EMR); information management; object-oriented architecture and communication; distributed databases; health care

Abstract: The development of a comprehensive Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system poses a number of unique information management challenges. The Mayo Clinic and Hewlett-Packard are currently collaborating on a pilot of an EMR system, intended to provide fast, reliable, and integrated access to patient and medical data to large numbers of simultaneous users, in a way that fits naturally with the users' normal mode of operation. We describe some key characteristics of EMR systems, with a focus on the information management issues that they raise, and offer insights on how these can be effectively addressed. While the Mayo Clinic constitutes a very large medical environment, similar issues exist in smaller settings, especially when one considers that patient and medical data will increasingly be available and gathered from a potentially large number of distributed information sources.

8 Pages

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