A public health information system design

Abstract

The integration of modern information technologies into health care resulted in development of public health care information systems for the purpose of aiding the medical community by providing for less error prone diagnoses and treatment of diseases. The architecture presented in this paper is an evidence-based health care information infrastructure which collects considerable amounts of reliable, evidence-based data over time from various sources, and that it classifies, interprets and makes the data readily available and accessible to the health care provider before patient consultations. Among many other goals, the proposed system's key objective and contribution is gathering Patients' Ancillary Data (PAD) and incorporating this information into the diagnosis and treatment workflow. The data from medical tests is enriched and complemented by patient ancillary data such as hereditary, residential, travel, custom, meteorological, biographical and demographical data. Automatic provisioning of PAD, another goal of the proposal, helps to diminish problems and misdiagnosis situations caused by language barriers-disorders that frequently prevent the acquisition of patient data. This attribute of the system assists physicians to shorten time for diagnosis and consultations, therefore dramatically improving quality and quantity of the physical examinations of patients. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.