Information Infrastructure For Healthcare (October 1994)

Voyager: Browsing and Automatically Extracting Healthcare Data from Scattered Databases

Sponsor: PPD Informatics (formerly Belmont Research, Inc.)

• Project Performance Period: 1/1/1995 - 12/31/1997
• Total project (est.): $2,581,000.00
• Requested ATP funds: $1,978,000.00

Although much progress has been made in collecting healthcare information into computer-readable databases, use of this potentially valuable information is hampered by the fact that most of the databases are isolated "planets" of information, separated by diverse access programs and incompatible file and data formats. A single hospital may deal with dozens of such databases; an in-depth analysis of a particular healthcare business might require accessing hundreds or thousands. Inspired by the overnight success of the http protocol and Mosaic software, which are widely used on the Internet to access a variety of text and graphics information in multiple formats, Belmont Research proposes to develop the tools to build similar network browsers and data collectors to give healthcare workers simple and transparent access to heterogeneous databases without requiring changes to the databases themselves. The task differs from simply reinventing Mosaic; the medical database browser will need to process the formats and commands of--and retrieve data from--the various heterogeneous databases it deals with without requiring changes to those systems. It also must support a sophisticated ability to pose queries to the remote database, accept the information back in a format that can be further manipulated, and provide for data integrity and security and patient confidentiality.

For project information:

David Fram, (617) 868-6878
dfram@belmont.com

ATP Project Manager

Barbara Cuthill, (301) 975-3273
barbara.cuthill@nist.gov