Journal Article

A configurable method for clinical quality measurement through electronic health records based on openEHR and CQL

Cai, Hailing, Zhi, Yunlong, Duan, Huilong, Fu, Zehai, Li, Mengyang, Lu, Xudong

2022

Overview

Background One of the primary obstacles to measure clinical quality is the lack of configurable solutions to make computers understand and compute clinical quality indicators. The paper presents a solution that can help clinical staff develop clinical quality measurement more easily and generate the corresponding data reports and visualization by a configurable method based on openEHR and Clinical Quality Language (CQL). Methods First, expression logic adopted from CQL was combined with openEHR to express clinical quality indicators. Archetype binding provides the clinical information models used in expression logic, terminology binding makes the medical concepts consistent used in clinical quality artifacts and metadata is regarded as the essential component for sharing and management. Then, a systematic approach was put forward to facilitate the development of clinical quality indicators and the generation of corresponding data reports and visualization. Finally, clinical physicians were invited to test our system and give their opinions. Results With the combination of openEHR and CQL, 64 indicators from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) were expressed for verification and a complicated indicator was shown as an example. 68 indicators from 17 different scenes in the local environment were also expressed and computed in our system. A platform was built to support the development of indicators in a unified way. Also, an execution engine can parse and compute these indicators. Based on a clinical data repository (CDR), indicators were used to generate data reports and visualization and shown in a dashboard. Conclusion Our method is capable of expressing clinical quality indicators formally. With the computer-interpretable indicators, a systematic approach can make it more easily to define clinical indicators and generate medical data reports and visualization, and facilitate the adoption of clinical quality measurements.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Analysis / Binding / Business intelligence software / Clinical quality indicators / Clinical quality measure / Communication / Computers / Dashboards / Data models / Data reports / Data warehouses / Electronic health records / Electronic medical records / Electronic records / Evidence-based medicine / Government programs / Health care / Health Informatics / Healthcare quality improvement / Indicators / Information Systems and Communication Service / Information technology / Knowledge / Language / Logic / Management of Computing and Information Systems / Medical care / Medical records / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Metadata / Methods / Natural language / Physicians / Quality assessment / Quality management / Software / Terminology / Visualization / Visualization (Computers)