A Generalized Relational Schema for an Integrated Clinical Patient Database
Carol Friedman, George M. Hripcsak, Stephen B. Johnson, James J. Cimino, Paul D. Clayton · PubMed Central · 1990
Patient data is central to a Clinical Information System (CIS). The organization of the data in a patient database is essential to the functioning of the system. If the CIS contains a medical decision support component, further requirements are imposed on the database. It must be capable of accurately representing a broad range of clinical information in coded form, and be organized for efficient retrievals by patient, time, and type of clinical term. This paper presents a generalized schema for a clinical patient database within the relational database model. The general design makes it possible to represent diverse clinical data in a standard structure and to organize the data so that it is densely clustered by patient and time.