Document-Based Databases for Medical Information Systems and Crisis Management

Author(s):  
Oliver Schmitt ◽  
Tim A. Majchrzak

Both for healthcare and crisis management, the usage of Information Systems (IS) has become routine. In fact, they are unthinkable without sophisticated IT support. Virtually all IS rely on data storage. Despite the document-oriented nature of medical datasets, relational databases (RDBMS) prevail. The authors evaluate a document-based database to assess its feasibility for the domain of healthcare and crisis support. To foster the understanding of this technology, the authors present the background of form-originated data storage, introduce document-based databases, and describe a use case relying on document-based databases. Based on their findings, the authors generalize the results with a focus on crisis management. The authors investigated good indications that document-based databases such as CouchDB are well-suited for IS in medical contexts. They might be a feasible option for the future development of systems in various fields of healthcare, crisis response, and medical research.

Author(s):  
Keith Clement

This case study discusses the role of education, curriculum development, research, and service in supporting information systems for crisis response management. The study describes the Council for Emergency Management and Homeland Security (CEMHS) organization that designs and develops academic programs and courses in these specialized areas. CEMHS combines all levels of education in California (from K-12 and postsecondary education) into a “state-wide solution” and network of academicians and professionals in emergency and disaster management, crisis response, and homeland security education and training. The organizational purpose is constructing a “vertical track” of academic programs and specialized programs to benefit and enhance information resource and crisis management. The implications and lessons learned from building collaborative partnerships between the crisis and disaster response academic and professional communities in academic program development and research initiatives are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Esperenza Marcos ◽  
Paloma Caceres

In spite of the fact that relational databases still hold the first place in the market, object-oriented databases are becoming, each day, more widely accepted. Relational databases are suitable for traditional applications supporting management tasks such as payroll or library management. Recently, as a result of hardware improvements, more sophisticated applications have emerged. Engineering applications, such as CAD/CAM (Computer Aided Design/ Computer Aided Manufacturing), CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) or CIM (Computer Integrating Manufacturing), office automation systems, multimedia systems such as GIS (Geographic Information Systems) or medical information systems, can be characterized as consisting of complex objects related by complex interrelationships. Representing such objects and relationships in the relational model implies that the objects must be decomposed into a large number of tuples. Thus, a considerable number of joins is necessary to retrieve an object and, when tables are too deeply nested, performance is dramatically reduced (Bertino and Marcos, 2000).


Author(s):  
Giancarlo Rodrigues ◽  
Alaine Margarete Guimarães

FMIS (farm management information systems) is the computational tool responsible to process data to get information that improves farmers' decision support. The data manipulated in FMIS is originated from diverse sources, stored, and read whenever necessary without subsequent modifications, thus dismissing the necessity of complex data storage systems such as offered by the relational model. Due to its capability to handle with high performance, a large amount of unstructured data and to reduce the complexity of applications, the NoSQL data storage model, a convenient alternative to relational model, recently gained a lot of attention in the information systems market. This way, this chapter discusses how NoSQL models could improve the FMIS architecture and performance when used as data storage. Some works that have already benefited from NoSQL model adoption are reviewed and convenient use cases where both data storage models could be well used in FMIS's architecture are advised and discussed.


Author(s):  
А.А. Чувилькин ◽  
А.В. Бояровская ◽  
Н.А. Борсук

Охрана здоровья граждан – одна из ключевых тем развития государства. О необходимости выстроить систему здравоохранения на новой технологической базе заявил в Послании Федеральному Собранию 21.04.2021 Президент РФ Владимир Путин. Здравоохранение представляет собой достаточно сложную и динамическую систему, которая требует постоянной оценки ситуации и быстрого принятия решений. Непрерывная оценка эпидемиологической ситуации и мониторинг здоровья конкретного гражданина невозможен без качественно организованного обмена информацией и единой системы данных, внедренных в повседневную работу медицинских учреждений. На данный момент существует большое количество медицинских информационных систем (МИС), однако, многие из них содержат избыточный функционал и специфичный формат хранения данных. Адаптировать существующие МИС под нужды конкретных регионов довольно проблематично как в трудо- и времязатратах, так и финансовом плане. Была поставлена задача разработать медицинскую информационную систему Астрал.Мед, направленную на решение актуальных задач в сфере оказания первичной медико-санитарной помощи. Одной из задач разработки является возможность передачи и приема различной медицинской информации в уже существующие МИС с целью, в конечном итоге, отправки этих данных в Единую государственную информационную систему в сфере здравоохранения. В данном случае должно реализовываться единое хранилище всех данных пациентов внезависимости от медицинского учреждения, в котором они обслуживаются, и от информационной системы в данном учреждении. Реализация системы Астрал.Мед состоит из: разработки модуля интерфейсной части; разработки базы данных и способа взаимодействия с ней; модуля обработки запросов от специалистов медицинского учреждения и модуля интеграции со сторонними МИС (что является одной из самых основных и сложных задач из-за возможной несовместимости форматов хранения данных в различных информационных системах). Protection of the health of citizens is one of the key topics in the development of the state. The need to build a health care system on a new technological base was announced by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin in his Address to the Federal Assembly on April 21, 2021. Health care is a rather complex and dynamic system that requires constant assessment of the situation and quick decision-making. A continuous assessment of the epidemiological situation and monitoring of the health of a particular citizen is impossible without a well-organized exchange of information and a unified data system introduced into the daily work of medical institutions. At the moment, there are a large number of medical information systems (MIS), however, many of them contain redundant functionality and a specific data storage format. It is quite problematic to adapt existing IIAs to the needs of specific regions, both in terms of labor and time costs, and financially. The task was to develop a medical information system Astral.Med, aimed at solving urgent problems in the field of primary health care. One of the development tasks is the possibility of transferring and receiving various medical information to the already existing MIS with the aim, ultimately, of sending this data to the Unified State Information System in the field of health care. In this case, a single repository of all patient data should be implemented, regardless of the medical institution in which they are served and the information system in this institution. Implementation of the Ast-Ral.Med system consists of: development of the interface module; developing a database and a way to interact with it; a module for processing requests from specialists of a medical institution and a module for integration with third-party MIS (which is one of the most basic and complex tasks due to the possible incompatibility of data storage formats in various information systems).


Author(s):  
Keith Clement

This case study discusses the role of education, curriculum development, research, and service in supporting information systems for crisis response management. The study describes the Council for Emergency Management and Homeland Security (CEMHS) organization that designs and develops academic programs and courses in these specialized areas. CEMHS combines all levels of education in California (from K-12 and postsecondary education) into a “state-wide solution” and network of academicians and professionals in emergency and disaster management, crisis response, and homeland security education and training. The organizational purpose is constructing a “vertical track” of academic programs and specialized programs to benefit and enhance information resource and crisis management. The implications and lessons learned from building collaborative partnerships between the crisis and disaster response academic and professional communities in academic program development and research initiatives are also discussed.


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