Representing knowledge, data and concepts for EHRS using DCM.

With the move towards next generations of Electronic Health Record Systems (EHRS), the focus changes from administrative and data retrieval and data entry system capabilities towards clinical functions. The representation of the clinical knowledge and evidence base into EHRS becomes an important asset for health care, with its own challenges. Clinician's do want EHRS support but do not want to standardize care, they do want unified terminology and structured data entry but also free text. In addition, information modelers challenge each other for the best solution, and care pathways and other workflows seem to differ for each situation. Such diverging approaches add complexity to the already difficult situation around Information Technology in health care, the EHRS in particular. This paper argues that a change is necessary to adopt Detailed Clinical Modeling as a method to organize clinical knowledge, represent concepts and define data in such a manner that it allows for semantics to be exchanged without being trapped in a specific technology. DCM help to fulfill the requirements for the enter data once, reuse multiple times paradigm for EHRS.