Federating clinical data from six pediatric hospitals: process and initial results for microbiology from the PHIS+ consortium

Abstract

Microbiology study results are necessary for conducting many comparative effectiveness research studies. Unlike core laboratory test results, microbiology results have a complex structure. Federating and integrating microbiology data from six disparate electronic medical record systems is challenging and requires a team of varied skills. The PHIS+ consortium which is partnership between members of the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings (PRIS) network, the Children's Hospital Association and the University of Utah, have used "FURTHeR' for federating laboratory data. We present our process and initial results for federating microbiology data from six pediatric hospitals.

Figure 1:

Simplified Micro Data Model.

Figure 2:

Assessment of metadata harmonization. Each sites’ field has be group into the CDM’s fields, associated sub-field, and its data elements.

Figure 3:

Example Micro Result showing the use of tags at the beginning and end of each row. The tag at the beginning of each row is followed by sequence numbers that tie a child data element with its parent. The SDE element belongs to the PDE having the PFSN as 321, and the CDE with CFSN as 321. It has an OFSN of 1 which indicates that it is the first organism reported for this culture study. It the 12^th susceptibility test performed on this organism, indicated by the SFSN of 12.

Figure 4:

Entity Relationship Diagram of the Harmonized and PHIS+ Micro Data Models.