Medical doctor database management began in 1928 when the American College of Surgeons formed the American Association of Record Librarians (AARL) to standardize medical records. This organization became known today as the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).
Due to its effectiveness, many similar systems were launched afterwards by other medical institutes for sharing and storing medical data. The exact purpose and utilization of these databases vary from clinic to clinic.
In this article, we’ll discuss what is a medical doctor database and its characteristics.
What is medical doctor database?
Medical data, also known as medical information, is a detailed record of a patient’s condition since childhood. This data is usually stored by doctors or hospitals and collected systematically for the sake of effective health care management.
The database is compiled from diagnoses, follow-ups and treatments collected from patients. All this information is stored into a single database run by a computer that analyses it, records and stores it into the database again for future references. Such digital management of data can be referred to as big data that results from an integrated database where all the gathered information is processed and analyzed to compile any insight that would be useful to medical science in general.
The different data handled in medical databases include expense invoices, hospital information system (HIS) data, electronic medical records (EMR), orderings and diagnostic imaging results. Patient’s prescription history data and voluntary adverse event report data will also be collected into the medical database for secondary purposes and research to provide more advanced and safer medical care.
Types of Medical Doctor Database
Medical doctor database can be categorized into different types. Let’s take a closer look at them to understand how medical databases are built.
Electronic Medical Records and Lab Data
Electronic medical records, laboratory data, and other patient-related information are also components of a medical database. To ensure the health of its patients, the healthcare organization keeps comprehensive records on injuries, illnesses, prescriptions and dietary information. These provide more details – symptoms and treatments – of an illness or injury than the main text of a doctor’s report alone, which makes them essential to the use of medical databases.
Health Claim Data
Health claim data is a medical bill presented to an insurance company by a health care provider. It contains the names of the patients who had visited the medical institutions, details of the performed medical procedures and associated billing information.
Claims data can provide a broad view of a patient’s interactions with the health care system, reducing selection bias and providing access to large and diverse samples.
Administrative Data
Administrative data are created at every point of contact with the health-care system, including visits to physicians and prescriptions filled at community pharmacies. Health care administrative data may reveal important insights into pharmacy practice and pharmacotherapy that can inform health care delivery, as well as benefits, harms and costs.
Pharmacists are important members of the health care team, and they may be uniquely positioned to answer important questions about health care delivery with data from pharmacy and medical claims databases.
Final Thoughts
Medical database has been a booming market in recent years, and it is still forecast to grow further. This is because there will always be a large amount of data generated in the medical field, which only grows with time. Medical institutions require these databases to take control over these massive amounts of data, and ultimately this is good for the patients. The database integrators provide consulting services for these types of projects as well as implementation services.
Connect With a Medical Doctor Database Expert
Would you like to learn more about the benefits of medical database and information management systems? Contact Lifepoint Informatics at 877.522.8378 today to book a free consultation session. Visit our contact page to discuss your needs and schedule a live demo of our lab interoperability solutions.