On creating a patient-centric database from multiple Hospital Information Systems in a National Health Service secondary care setting

The information present in Hospital Information Systems (HIS) is heterogeneous and is used primarily by health practitioners to support and improve patient care. Conducting clinical research, data analyses or knowledge discovery projects using electronic patient data in secondary care centres relies on accurate data collection, which is often an ad-hoc process poorly described in the literature. This paper aims at facilitating and expanding on the process of retrieving and collating patient-centric data from multiple HIS for the purpose of creating a research database. The development of a process roadmap for this purpose illustrates and exposes the constraints and drawbacks of undertaking such work in secondary care centres.