Use of the virtual medical record data model for communication among components of a distributed decision-support system

MobiGuide is a distributed decision-support system (DSS) that provides decision support for patients and physicians. Patients receive support using a light-weight Smartphone DSS linked to data arriving from wearable monitoring devices and physicians receive support via a web interface connected to a backend DSS that has access to an integrated personal health record (PHR) that stores hospital EMR data, monitoring data, and recommendations provided for the patient by the DSSs. The patient data model used by the PHR and by all the system components that interact in a service-oriented architecture is based on HL7's virtual medical record (vMR) model. We describe how we used and extended the vMR model to support communication between the system components for the complex workflow needed to support guidance of patients any time everywhere.