Formal Representation of Summary Tables for Health Care Statistical Database Management

There is an ever-increasing demand for statistical information in health-care societies, and voluminous statistics are collected every year. When one needs information on survey results, it is generally not allowed to access the original data, and the summary tables are the most important source of information which can be shared. In order to store summary tables as a well-organized database and to perform flexible retrieval, a formal study has been made on the structure of summary tables. We introduce the notion of summary table scheme and define the operations called table transformation. A statistical database management system has been implemented based on the study. In our study, a statistical database is a collection of summary tables obtained from a survey. If a survey is conducted periodically, a database consists of all the tables obtained in the past. System utilities have been implemented for handling time-oriented information.