Modeling the Management of Electronic Health Records in Healthcare Information Systems

Healthcare information systems include the information technologies and processes that support the healthcare providers in performing their services. Currently more and more healthcare organizations are converting their paper data to electronic format and keep them in computers' storage. This practice is partly due to government laws or regulations; it is also partly due to a need to effectively compete with other healthcare organizations. Two main types of electronic data records for a healthcare organization are electronic medical record (EMR) and electronic health record (EHR) for patients. There are two characteristics of a patient's data records. The first is their longevity and the second is the strict requirement of their integrity. Properly managing these data records is a challenging task. This paper presents an approach in modeling the management of EMR's and EHR's by using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). It demonstrates the usefulness by mapping some important healthcare functions to the elements of the UML model.