Analysis of EHRs for research, quality management and health politics.

Lifelong electronic health records can supply valuable information for research, quality management and health politics in addition to supporting treatment of patients. Based on experiences with scientific data analysis in a university hospital environment, requirements on cross-institutional analysis of electronic health records in a healthcare system are discussed. The concept of archetypes can play a key role in this context. Archetypes can be utilized in data analysis for visualization, semantic linkage and finally for standardized data transfer.