A Community Health Information Model: The Basis of a Partnership in Information System Development

The Community Health Information Development (CHID) Project, a project for NSW Health, was initiated in August 1994. The goal of CHID was to assess the feasibility of an information system for this sector of the NSW health system which could answer questions on the business functions, performance measurement, service planning and service quality of community health. An organisational structure and process were developed by October 1994. That organisational structure and process were utilised for the assessment of the community health environment to determine the feasibility of, and requirements for, a community health information system. A brief overview of the four interrelated Working Parties' findings: Service Domains; Common Data Set; Information Management; and, Information Technology is provided. The key concepts in the Community Health Information Model (CHIM), a deliverable of the Information Management Strategy, is then outlined. This model, built through extensive consultation with community health workers, is accompanied by a dictionary which outlines each community health entity and attribute. The Community Health Information Model has 230 entities, approximately 485 attributes and 357 relationships between those entities and attributes and provides a common language for communication within community health. An overview of the Community Health Function Model, a companion model for the CHIM, is then provided. A Function Model describes the processes which generate the entities and attributes in an Information Model. The Function Model is also used to inform the scope of information system development, the next phase of this project. Following completion of the assessment phase in November 1994, a Business Case for the development of an information system for community health was accepted by the executive of NSW Health (the NSW health department). The paper outlines briefly, progress on the development of the information system and the proposed timeline for implementation.