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S TAT E M E N T O F P U R P O S E A N D R E Q U I R E M E N T S
For a complete description of the project requirements, please see: “Prototype For Inter-Hospital Patient
Database ‘Medical History Database and Correlation System’ (MHDCS), Functional Requirements” dated
May 6, 1999. A brief summary of the high level goals for this system is repeated here.
Due to the importance of personal and family medical histories in providing patient care, the ability to maintain
patient hospital events, and correlate medical histories of blood relatives is extremely important.
Few hospitals today maintain structured computerised patient histories, and there is little data collected from
patients regarding family histories (related illnesses between relatives). Most records are maintained in paper files,
with hand-written notes. Entries are frequently illegible and out of sequence, making review of patient history
difficult and error-prone. Moreover, in many cases, due to the private nature of personal illness, it is common for
individuals to be uninformed regarding medical histories of relatives. Therefore, while close relatives may have
highly relevant medical histories that can reveal important considerations in patient treatment, it is frequently the
case that such relationships go undiscovered.
The MHDCS software shows a simple programmatic solution for solving both of these issues:
1. Comprehensive maintenance and query capability of patient medical histories.
2. Correlation of patient medical issues with those of close family relatives.
The development of database software for maintaining and correlating patient/relative medical histories across
regional hospitals would be an invaluable asset in providing superior medical care. As well, over time, a broad
collection of data would enable “data mining” which may surface unexpected medical relationships previously
unrecognised. Use of this data for data mining could lead to advances in medical treatments and patient care.
The purpose of this project is to design and develop a prototype of this system, sufficient for demonstration
purposes, as a proof of concept entity. This prototype may be used as a demonstration vehicle for marketing and
sales of MHDCS.
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