Experiences with a Two-Level Modelling Approach to Electronic Health Records

In today’s distributed healthcare environment, information is a key asset and getting access to that data is vital to the management of a patient’s health. Electronic Health Record (EHR) standards aim to assist in the interoperable access and integration of this distributed information. However, there are difficulties applying traditional system development approaches to EHR standards because of the complexity and range of clinical data. The Good Electronic Health Record (GEHR), a framework for structuring, storing and sharing EHRs, uses an innovative two-level modelling approach to overcome these difficulties. In this approach, all types of clinical data are stored using a generic model, and constraint models called “archetypes” ensure that the data represents valid clinical concepts. To test this approach, two field trials funded by the Australian General Practice Computing Group (GPCG) looked at exporting data from existing systems to GEHR. In this paper, we describe GEHR’s “archetype” approach and describe the outcomes of the trials. Cross References: H.1 – Information systems: Models and principles; H.4 – Information systems application; J.3 – Computer applications: Life and medical sciences