The electronic healthcare record (EHR) is a merged presentation of the information obtained through various systems in the healthcare enterprise (Hasselbring et al., 2000). Imaging and demographic data contribute to the contents. Additionally, the physician comments, markup and reports also contribute to the record. These individual pieces of the EHR are drawn from many disparate systems throughout the enterprise. The Record Information System (RIS) or alternatively a Health Information System (HIS) will be the primary demographic repository for patient information. As such, this text and contextual information will be used as the primary data source for downstream comparison. The Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS-ADMIN, 2007) will be used as a repository for imaging data (Miltchenko et al., 2003). Figure 1 presents the main components of the electronic health record that need to be integrated and synchronized.
Main components for the system-of-systems