On the need for a holistic approach to information quality in healthcare and medicine

Abstract

In this paper, we present an overview of various current research efforts aimed at improving the analysis, measurement and monitoring of information quality at an enterprise level in the healthcare arena. The main focus is on Data Quality (DQ) and recent advances and improvements in Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) architectures. Although there are a wide range of Information Quality (IQ) tools available in the market, there is a significant and critical need within the community for a single suite of enterprise-level tools that can be used to monitor the DQ of various input sources into an Electronic Medical Record (EMR), or a Data Warehouse (DW). Hence, we propose the need for a Data Quality Mediator (DQM) engine in this paper. Recent dependence of Healthcare records on Information systems and mandates by the government to computerize health information has encouraged hospitals and physician offices to use electronic systems but the focus on DQ tools lags far behind.