“One of the biggest challenges for linking together different health information systems is the inconsistency in referring to a given individual – be that a physician, a patient, or whomever. One system, for example a lab system, may refer to “Patient x” one way (using their own arbitrary internal patient identifier number), while a different system (for example, a hospital) may use a completely different identifier. Between ambulatory EHRs, each one will also likely refer to a given patient with different, internal methods. Cross-linking these systems so that a unified dashboard can be created that displays all the information from all these systems is made much more difficult as a result.”
Article
Robert Rowley, EHR Bloggers, 29 October 2009
