DEUS: Distributed Electronic Patient File Update System

Abstract

Inadequate availability of patient information is a major cause for medical errors and affects costs in healthcare. Traditional approaches to information integration in healthcare do not solve the problem. Applying a document-oriented paradigm to systems integration enables inter-institutional information exchange in healthcare. The goal of the proposed architecture is to provide information exchange between strict autonomous healthcare institutions, bridging the gap between primary and secondary care. In a long-term healthcare data distribution scenario, the patient has to maintain sovereignty over any personal health information. Thus, the traditional publish-subscribe architecture is extended by a phase of human mediation within the data flow. DEUS essentially decouples the roles of information author and information publisher into distinct actors, resulting in a triangular data flow. The interaction scenario will be motivated. The significance of human mediation will be discussed. DEUS provides a carefully distinguished actor and role model for mediated pub-sub. The data flow between the participants is factored into distinct phases of information interchange. The artefact model is decomposed into role-dependent constituent parts. Both a domain specific (healthcare) terminology and a generic terminology is provided. From a technical perspective, the system design is presented. The sublayer for network transfer will be highlighted as well as the subsystem for human-machine interaction.