SUMMARY
Enovacom’s vision
We believe that the chain of medical decision-making is based on a foundation where healthcare professionals expect the right data, at the right time, for the right patient.
Whether it is test results, vital signs taken from biomedical devices or sensors, or the history of prescriptions or health episodes, facilitating the sharing of this information is critical.
Healthcare innovation requires access to health data sources. Health data taken in great volume is a valuable resource that, when properly stored and used, can transform medical practice and take patient care to a higher level of efficiency and personalization.
We are committed to providing solutions to centralize and structure health data, ensuring that it is accessible and can comply with the highest standards of interoperability, privacy, and security.
Using health data repositories will revolutionize the way we care for patients, which is the basis of an approach to medicine called “the 5 Ps,”: Personalized, Preventive, Predictive, Participatory and Proof.
For research, the challenge consists in using this data in a consolidated way and in a very large quantity as soon as possible to detect the emergence of certain diseases to speed up diagnoses. or to assess more precisely the effects of a medical treatment.
To address these issues, both at the institutional and territorial level (local, regional, or national), Enovacom has chosen for several years to invest in health data warehouses to promote the sharing and access of patient information to healthcare professionals.
What is a health data warehouse?
A health data warehouse is a software system that stores, organizes, and secures a centralized database used for research purposes, studies, or assessments in the health sector.
Health data can be used for multiple immediate or future purposes. The warehouse meets a broader need than simply collecting medical information as part of an ad hoc study for which the data is specifically collected.
We focus on using the data warehouse as a tool for collecting patient data. In this case, we use a warehouse connected to other applications, which will dump their data in real time into a secure storage space thanks to the FHIR standard.
Patients, stakeholders, and beneficiaries
As a primary source of health system knowledge and analysis, a warehouse provides an innovative approach and better patient monitoring.
The use of data is multifaceted and makes it possible to improve care pathways or detect potential medical issues, among other things.
The democratization of the digital world, connected objects and big data have opened new horizons. The growth in data from hospitals, but also from citizens themselves (e.g., through applications) offers many opportunities for research, innovation, and medical advances.
“Patients need to remain in control of their medical information to be able to access and enhance it. Recent studies show how involved they feel in this process and include health issues and the management of their health data among their main concerns. They believe it is a common good that must continually be protected and developed. We all have to consider that and take care of every piece of data.”
FHIR’s role with a data warehouse
Enhancing health data means making it easily and quickly accessible. The FHIR standard addresses this need for accessibility by becoming more agile than previous interoperability standards. This new standard, used to store and exchange data in a JSON format, results in standardized, patient-focused data modelling.
The FHIR standard therefore illustrates the relational model of information systems in healthcare and will be the same no matter how the data consumer uses it. FHIR uses modular components called resources, available in open source, to standardize the data’s structure in a single model. Each resource will then contain the data that characterizes it.
Its use now goes beyond research and clinical trials with the provision of resources that are essential for data management within health institutions. FHIR integrates into diagnoses and routine care. While meeting a single standard, some flexibility remains possible to meet usage needs.
The operation of FHIR is very traditional; the data is stored in warehouses compatible with the standard. These warehouses are then queried by making the REST API available to send information from points A to B.
The data warehouse consists of two main components: the repository that collects the raw data of documents, and the registry that indexes these documents by storing the metadata of the information it receives in FHIR format.
The warehouse is neutral within the information system and is open to all types of software. Having a native FHIR warehouse ensures the solution’s sustainability.
Interoperability for the health data warehouse
Every institution generates, stores, and manages a significant volume of data. This heterogeneous data is disseminated across many software and applications within the health information system. As we have seen, this data must be in the same format to be consolidated and stored in a sustainable and reusable way. It needs to go through an interoperability engine to be standardized.
The market-leading interoperability platform, Enovacom Integration Engine, helps healthcare institutions manage and oversee their health data flows, as well as easily avail themselves with a warehouse to enhance and use their data.
This data must be structured to be usable after storage and flow transformations need to be conducted through an interoperability platform.
Such a platform will ensure that the data is sent to any information system application or software in the right format. The interoperability makes the data accessible to those involved in the pathway.
As we have seen, it is also a key part of any warehouse’s input and output. The interoperability/data warehouse link helps build a reliable, open, and secure system while enabling the healthcare institution to maintain control of its data.
For example, to trace data from a medical device to a data warehouse, an interoperability platform is required to move the data to the warehouse and standardize it before storage.
