Concept Matching between OpenEHR and SONHO

Abstract

SONHO is the dominant Information System (IS) in hospitals in Portugal. Currently it is seriously compromised due to its outdated infrastructure, and hospitals seek a solution enabled data migration to new ISs. OpenEHR is an open standard that describes the management and storage, retrieval and exchange of health data in electronic health records. The aim of this work is to study how to create an application interface to SONHO implemented according to the openEHR standard. The first phase of this work was to extract the demographic concepts existing on SONHO. The second phase was to select the proper openEHR structure holding the patient demographic information. The third phase was to match both concepts aiming to identify omissions in openEHR archetypes. 41 concepts were found in SONHO, and 12 in openEHR person demographics archetype. From the 41 different SONHO concepts, 14 concepts were mapped to a openEHR concept and 27 are missing. From the 12 concepts found in the openEHR person demographics 3 are missing in SONHO. We claim that many important SONHO concepts are still missing in the openEHR person demographics archetype (e.g. patient identification numbers). To build a useful interface the used archetype must include the missing concepts, which leads to the need of creating a new demographics archetype.