Abstract
In this article, the authors, using information-systems modeling techniques, and considering current national legal regulations, present the cloud-enabled architecture of a clinical data repository. The patient’s medical record is an important carrier of information necessary for accurate diagnosis and selection of the correct treatment process. Therefore, it is not surprising that since the beginning of the development of computer technologies, databases have been built to enable the management of a patient’s medical records. These systems were most-often deployed locally at individual healthcare units, which carried certain limitations both in terms of the security and availability of the stored information, and the possibility of exchanging it with other clinics. However, recent developments in the standardization of medical information exchange in Poland, together with the revolution in cloud computing, have opened up completely new perspectives for clinical-data-repository implementations helping to make them far more sustainable. Although, the practical aspects of implementing clinical-documentation repositories are studied both in forums of European countries and also around the world; so far, no similar research was conducted with respect to Poland. This study tries to fill that gap by proposing a flexible multi-variant cloud-enabled architecture of the system providing the services of a clinical-data repository. The goal of the work was to propose such a system architecture that allows having a system that is either cloud-agnostic, that uses specifically selected cloud services, or that is even deployable locally. Thanks to the use of cloud computing services, the implemented system is characterized by high availability, scalability, and the possibility of exchanging data between medical institutions, which enables the improvement in the quality of medical processes for the whole Polish population.
Highlights
In recent years, the pace of the advancement of society has been enhanced by uninterrupted growth in the spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) and in ICT uptake by citizens, enterprises, and public organizations, as well as the increasing role of information in all spheres of life [1]
High-availability cluster, or a memory cache NoSQL database, e.g., Redis Cluster. This block delivers GUI parts of web applications (the block serves a static content of a single-page application (SPA) like HTML, CSS, and Javascript files)
The adoption of cloud computing along with progressive standardization brings unprecedented possibilities of improvements in clinical-data management, which in turn leads to the rising quality of medical processes
Summary
The pace of the advancement of society has been enhanced by uninterrupted growth in the spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) and in ICT uptake by citizens, enterprises, and public organizations, as well as the increasing role of information in all spheres of life [1]. A society that is good at employing ICT to create, disseminate, and utilize information effectively can gain social and economic advantages, reach the cutting edge of competitive markets, and pioneer new avenues for welfare creation for their citizens [2]. This is, in particular, true when it comes to the healthcare sector [3], where massive information describing one’s state of health is being produced every single day. The use of computing clouds has an extremely low entry threshold, and the costs incurred depend on the scale of use of individual services of a given cloud service provider
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