Guiding interoperable electronic health records through patient sharing networks
Author(s)
Clarke, Jonathan M
Warren, Leigh R
Arora, Sonal
Barahona, Mauricio
Darzi, Ara W
Type
Working Paper
Abstract
Effective sharing of clinical information between care providers is a critical component of a safe, efficient health system. National data sharing systems may be costly, politically contentious and do not reflect local patterns of care delivery. This study examines hospital attendances in England from 2013 to 2015 to identify instances of patient sharing between hospitals. Of 19.6 million patients receiving care from 155 hospital care provider, 130 million presentations were identified. On 14.7 million occasions (12%), patients attended a different hospital to the one they attended on their previous interaction. A network of hospitals was constructed based on the frequency of patient sharing between hospitals which was partitioned using the Louvain algorithm into 10 distinct data-sharing communities, improving the continuity of data sharing in such instances from 0% to 65-95%. Locally implemented data-sharing communities of hospitals may achieve effective accessibility of clinical information without a large-scale national interoperable information system.
Date Issued
2018-11-19
Date Acceptance
2018-12-01
Citation
NPJ digital medicine, 2018, 1 (1), pp.65-65
ISSN
2398-6352
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Start Page
65
End Page
65
Journal / Book Title
NPJ digital medicine
Volume
1
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). It is made available under a CC BY 4.0 International license.
License URL
Sponsor
National Institute for Health Research
Identifier
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/473272v1
Grant Number
NF SI 061710038
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
65
Date Publish Online
2018-12-10