Infrastructure for Healthcare Data Management in Pakistan

Abstract

Variations and gaps in healthcare result into increase cost in terms of long treatment cycle, readmission and care quality considerations. However health practices can be improved. This can be done by synthesis of evolving clinical insight into current practices. Visual analytics on healthcare data can reveal such insight into opportunities, impacts and comparisons among peer groups. These techniques can figure out opportunities and gaps in data, healthcare and measurement methods. Unfortunately, healthcare in Pakistan is facing serious issues due to lack of public and administrative data reporting infrastructure. Integrated healthcare analytics would be extremely hard and tedious process without existence of a Government agency to support healthcare data collection. In this project we have attempted to create a process and model for public healthcare data collection. We have developed an integrated data warehouse, feature of bulk data load by hospitals, and a support system for medical doctors to add their patient information. The web application follows Model-View-Controller architecture. As an outcome of this project, huge piles of structured public healthcare data would be collected and can be used in statistical data mining and decision support to improve situation of healthcare in Pakistan. In the developed system following benefits are observed  Infrastructure for collection and management of healthcare data is developed  Public data warehouse is built  We will have anonymous data of patients discharge summaries for analysis which will be helpful in decision making  As we have followed HL7 model for collection of data so we will have HL7 standardized data  ICD-9 codes are used for entering information about patient’s diagnosis and procedures so this is another standardization of data  Completely implemented data warehouse management operation and easy to use so cost of management is reduced