Electronic health information standard for patient transfer based on CDA, focused on patient information in small-sized hospitals (JHCIS)

In this paper, the electronic health information standard is a standard prototype which can be used for patient information transfer among hospitals in Thailand, based on Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) in the xml format. The prototype is developed for Java Health Center Information System (JHCIS), which is a healthcare information system developed by the Ministry of Public Health and widely used in small-sized hospitals. This paper proposes a new method for electronic patient transfer in order to replace the traditional way of using paper work. When transferring a patient, his information in the database of the host hospital will be exported into the CDA-based standard file which can be electronically transferred to the destination hospital. Then, the destination hospital can import information in the received CDA-based standard file into its database automatically. The proposed method consists of 3 main processes including: 1) data mapping, 2) CDA revising, and 3) standard prototype implementation. First, data mapping is a process to map components in CDA to contents in the JHCIS database. Second, CDA is revised based on the mapping results, in order to make it suitable for Thai health information. Third, the standard prototype is implemented for patient information transfer, focusing on JHCIS. The program adapters are developed to: 1) export patient health information records in the JHCIS database to be in the format of the revised CDA-based standard, and 2) import patient health information records in the received CDA-based standard files back into the JHCIS database.