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CC BY 4.0 · ACI open 2019; 03(01): e44-e62
DOI: 10.1055/s-0039-1688936
Original Article
Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York

Developing HL7 CDA-Based Data Warehouse for the Use of Electronic Health Record Data for Secondary Purposes

Fabrizio Pecoraro
1   National Research Council, Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, Rome, Italy
,
Daniela Luzi
1   National Research Council, Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, Rome, Italy
,
Fabrizio L. Ricci
1   National Research Council, Institute for Research on Population and Social Policies, Rome, Italy
› Author Affiliations Funding None.
Further Information

Publication History

01 August 2018

11 April 2019

Publication Date:
14 June 2019 (online)

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Abstract

Background The growing availability of clinical and administrative data collected in electronic health records (EHRs) have led researchers and policy makers to implement data warehouses to improve the reuse of EHR data for secondary purposes. This approach can take advantages from a unique source of information that collects data from providers across multiple organizations. Moreover, the development of a data warehouse benefits from the standards adopted to exchange data provided by heterogeneous systems.

Objective This article aims to design and implement a conceptual framework that semiautomatically extracts information collected in Health Level 7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) documents stored in an EHR and transforms them to be loaded in a target data warehouse.

Results The solution adopted in this article supports the integration of the EHR as an operational data store in a data warehouse infrastructure. Moreover, data structure of EHR clinical documents and the data warehouse modeling schemas are analyzed to define a semiautomatic framework that maps the primitives of the CDA with the concepts of the dimensional model. The case study successfully tests this approach.

Conclusion The proposed solution guarantees data quality using structured documents already integrated in a large-scale infrastructure, with a timely updated information flow. It ensures data integrity and consistency and has the advantage to be based on a sample size that covers a broad target population. Moreover, the use of CDAs simplifies the definition of extract, transform, and load tools through the adoption of a conceptual framework that load the information stored in the CDA in the data warehouse.

Keywords

data warehouse - dimensional model - Health Level 7 - Clinical Document Architecture - electronic health record - secondary uses

Authors' Contributions

All authors contributed in the conception of the study as well as in the design of the conceptual framework that was subsequently implemented by F.P. All authors contributed equally in drafting, critically revising, and writing the final version of the article.


 

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