Patient Care Pathway Shape Analysis in SQL Server
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems face challenges in efficiently analyzing and comparing patient care pathways for different patients with the same medical condition, leading to variations in treatment and diagnosis, which can impact clinical effectiveness and cost.
Innovation Solution
The system generates a care pathway shape as a custom user-defined type in the SQL Server database, allowing for efficient storage and comparison of patient care pathways by representing them as a single unique value, enabling fast querying and aggregation of data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If patient care pathway data is stored in traditional database formats, then data can be stored, but querying and comparison operations become slow and inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms patient care pathway data into a specialized data type called PathwayShape that represents entire care pathways as single comparable values. This parameter transformation enables the database to store and query pathway data more efficiently, allowing for high-speed comparison operations that were previously slow when using traditional row-by-row data structures.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention introduces a new dimensional representation of care pathway data by creating a custom data type that aggregates multiple pathway events into a single composite value. This dimensional transformation allows the system to compare entire care pathways as unified objects rather than processing individual events separately, dramatically improving query performance.
2Loss of information
If detailed patient event data is stored for every patient, then comprehensive analysis is possible, but data complexity and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple patient event records into a single PathwayShape data type that represents the complete care pathway. This consolidation maintains all necessary pathway information while reducing data structure complexity, as the database can now store and manipulate entire care pathways as unified objects rather than managing numerous individual event records separately.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention creates an abstract representation or copy of the care pathway in the form of a PathwayShape object. This copied representation captures the essential structure and sequence of care events without requiring the full complexity of the original detailed event data, enabling efficient storage and comparison while preserving pathway integrity.
3Reliability
If care pathway data is stored in normalized relational tables, then data integrity is maintained, but aggregation and comparison operations require complex joins and become inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary aggregation of patient event data into PathwayShape objects before storing them in the database. This pre-processing action maintains data integrity by ensuring proper pathway structure and sequence are established upfront, while also enabling faster subsequent operations since the data is already organized for efficient comparison and aggregation without requiring complex join operations at query time.
Data Source
AI summary
A method includes accessing data related to a series of patient events, and determining whether the data accessed is related to a specific condition. Care pathway data for the condition is generated in response to determining that the accessed data is related to the specific condition. The care pathways data for the condition is stored at a custom extension to a relational database.