Electronic medical records information system

Abstract

There is provided an apparatus for organizing a clinical observation in the form of clinical information entered by a user into memory. The apparatus includes a mechanism to receive the clinical information, which is associated with the clinical observation and has a plurality of clinical attributes. There is a mechanism for parsing the clinical information, and which identifies a clinical information data structure representative of the clinical information and which has one or more granule information data structures. Each of the granule information data structures has a collection of generic attributes. There is a mechanism to assign the clinical attributes to respective ones of the generic attributes of the one or more granule information data structures. The clinical information data structure associates the clinical attributes with respective ones of the generic attributes of each of the granule information data structures.

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         18 . A carrier wave embodying a computer data signal representing sequences of statements and instructions which, when executed by a processor cause the processor to version an existing clinical information data structure, the statements and instructions comprising the steps of:
 retrieving existing clinical information from a first location in a memory store;   presenting the existing clinical information to a user;   receiving a signal from the user to version the existing clinical information; and   copying the existing clinical information as a version to a second location in the memory store, the second location in the memory store containing one or more versions of the clinical information.   
     
     
         19 . A computer program product, comprising:
 a memory having computer readable code embodied therein, for execution by a CPU, for versioning an existing clinical information data structure, said code comprising:
 retrieving code means for retrieving existing clinical information from a first location in a memory store; 
 user interface code means for presenting the existing clinical information to a user; 
 versioning signal receiving means for receiving a signal from the user to version the existing clinical information; and 
 versioning code means for copying the existing clinical information as a version to a second location in the memory store, the second location in the memory store containing one or more versions of the clinical information. 
   
     
     
         20 . An apparatus for versioning clinical information in an electronic medical records information system comprising:
 means for retrieving existing clinical information from a first location in a memory store;   means for presenting the existing clinical information to a user;   means for receiving a signal from the user to version the existing clinical information; and   means for copying the existing clinical information as a version to a second location in the memory store, the second location in the memory store containing one or more versions of the clinical information.   
     
     
         21 . The apparatus as claimed in  claim 20 , further including means for generating a hash. 
     
     
         22 . The apparatus as claimed in  claim 20 , further including means for comparing hash values. 
     
     
         23 . A method of versioning clinical information in an electronic medical records information system comprising the steps of:
 retrieving existing clinical information from a first location in a memory store;   presenting the existing clinical information to a user;   receiving a signal from the user to version the existing clinical information; and   copying the existing clinical information as a version to a second location in the memory store, the second location in the memory store containing one or more versions of the clinical information.   
     
     
         24 . The method of versioning clinical information as claimed in  claim 23  further comprising the steps of:
 collecting updated clinical information from the user; and 
 storing the updated clinical information in the first location of the memory store. 
 
     
     
         25 . An apparatus for visually playing back versioned information to a user in a graphical user interface comprising:
 means for displaying a first version of the versioned information to the user in the graphical user interface;   means for selecting a second version of the versioned information including a slider control, the slider control being displayed in the graphical user interface, the user adjusting the slider control thereby providing a version selection signal; and   means for retrieving the second version of the versioned information, the means for retrieving receiving the version selection signal and retrieving the second version, the means for displaying the second version.   
     
     
         26 . An apparatus for clinical contextual encounter between a patient and a clinician in an electronic medical records information system comprising:
 means for receiving new clinical information related to the patient into the electronic medical records information system;   means for recognizing a fundamental unit of medical observation of the new clinical information;   means for retrieving historical clinical information related to the patient from a memory store, the historical clinical information being of the same type of the fundamental unit of medical observation; and   means for presenting the new clinical information and the historical clinical information to the clinician, whereby a trend in the fundamental unit of medical observation is thereby displayed.   
     
     
         27 . A method of clinical contextual encounter between a patient and a clinician in an electronic medical records information system comprising the steps of:
 receiving new clinical information related to the patient into the electronic medical records information system;   recognizing a fundamental unit of medical observation of the new clinical information;   retrieving historical clinical information related to the patient from a memory store, the historical clinical information being of the same type of the fundamental unit of medical observation; and   presenting the new clinical information and the historical clinical information to the clinician, whereby a trend in the fundamental unit of medical observation is thereby displayed.   
     
     
         28 . The apparatus as claimed in  claim 26 , further including means for analyzing the new clinical information and the historical clinical information and means for providing an opinion. 
     
     
         29 . The apparatus as claimed in  claim 28 , wherein the opinion is a diagnosis. 
     
     
         30 . The method as claimed in  claim 27 , further including the steps of analyzing the new clinical information and the historical clinical information and providing an opinion. 
     
     
         31 . A non-transitory memory for storing health information for access by an application program executed on a data processor or data processing system, the non-transitory memory comprising:
 a data structure stored in the memory, the data structure including health information resident in a database;   a plurality of granule information data structures, each of the granule information data structures having a collection of generic attributes and a global unique identifier attribute;   a plurality of clinical observations, each of the clinical observations including a collection of the granule information data structures, each of the clinical observations having a collection of clinical attributes, and each of the clinical observations being stored as a single database row entry with the global unique identifier attribute in a metadata column;   a plurality of clinical information data structures, each of the clinical information data structures including a base information data structure and a clinical category information structure, each said base information data structure including the collection of granule information data structures which are included in at least one of the clinical observations, and each said clinical category information data structure mapping the clinical attributes of the said at least one of the clinical observations to the generic attributes of the granule information data structures included in said at least one of the clinical observations; and   an attribute database in the base information database structure of each of the clinical information data structures to allow new generic attributes to be added, wherein the granule information data structures are agnostic of the clinical observations and new said granule information data structures inherit the base information data structures of the clinical information data structures from which the new granule information data structures are created or derived, thereby allowing new said generic attributes to be added to the new granule information data structures without altering an existing architecture of the flat file database.