RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Guiding Interoperable Electronic Health Records Through Patient Sharing Networks
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 473272
DO 10.1101/473272
A1 Jonathan M Clarke
A1 Leigh R Warren
A1 Sonal Arora
A1 Mauricio Barahona
A1 Ara W Darzi
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/11/19/473272.abstract
AB Effective sharing of clinical information between care providers is a critical component of a safe, efficient health system. National data sharing systems may be costly, politically contentious and do not reflect local patterns of care delivery. This study examines hospital attendances in England from 2013 to 2015 to identify instances of patient sharing between hospitals. Of 19.6 million patients receiving care from 155 hospital care provider, 130 million presentations were identified. On 14.7 million occasions (12%), patients attended a different hospital to the one they attended on their previous interaction. A network of hospitals was constructed based on the frequency of patient sharing between hospitals which was partitioned using the Louvain algorithm into 10 distinct data-sharing communities, improving the continuity of data sharing in such instances from 0% to 65-95%. Locally implemented data-sharing communities of hospitals may achieve effective accessibility of clinical information without a large-scale national interoperable information system.