Rule Based Inference Model for Exchange of Medical Information in Context of Pakistan’s Medical Laws

Abstract

National Health Information Exchange (NHIX) is a rapidly evolving cyber-infrastructure technology. The concept enables the sharing of electronic healthcare-related data within a geographic region. Information can be exchanged between autonomous healthcare related entities such as physicians, hospitals, test laboratories, insurers, emerging Health Information Organizations (HIO). Non-healthcare organizations can also become privy to such information, including governments and non-governmental authorities. During a human being’s lifetime, a person may visit numerous doctors, hospitals, and medical facilities. From birth through adulthood, the information trail from these visits can be useful both to the individual and in the aggregate. If the information from each visits can be collected and made easily available and organized, it can be used to improve the quality of healthcare. In fact, data organized properly can be lifesaving. Many duplicate tests can be avoided. Doctors may make more informed medical decisions and prescribe more accurate treatments with better information. The right data in the right context can allow an individual to better monitor their own health. A good nationwide medical information system can go above and beyond what is commonly termed “big data” information derived from a long term database containing a large number of individuals can be used for better capacity planning, minimizing the overall cost of healthcare for an entire country. It can be a treasure trove of data for analysis and discovery of disease trends and treatments. An infrastructure to contain and manage medical information is therefore vital for the well-being of any country in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, much of the world still utilizes nineteenth century medical documentation practices. Personal medical information is often poorly recorded and eventually lost due to a lack of appropriate information technology. We propose a national initiative to produce a cyber-infrastructure for the secure and private exchange of healthcare information (hospital records, MRI images, medical history, insurance information, pathological reports, etc.) among the nations healthcare industry stakeholders, and also throughout the world (with all individual rights, privacy rules and regulations in proper standard formats of medical documents). The goal of this research is to explore a National Health Information Exchange (NHIX) for Pakistan and for developing countries in general. However, due to the enormity of this problem, we in particular propose to demonstrate a concept application, Medical Drop Box (MDB) with the key technological components of a future NHIX. With MDB, a person will be able to collect his/her healthcare data and share it with doctors in a seamless way, in conformance with a regulatory Imran Khan: 62-FBAS/PHDCS/F10 Page vi of 121 framework. In addition to providing the basic infrastructure for handling numerous types of health care data, the main challenge of NHIX is to allow individuals and associated parties to manage and share their medical information while maintaining personal control and preferences afforded to citizens by medical laws, information rights and privacy rules. The development of a comprehensive National Health Information Exchange (NHIX) is paramount. The research propose such a framework for Pakistan that will allow all medical entities (hospital, insurance, employers, doctors, labs, individual themselves, emergency rooms, and perhaps future home monitoring systems) to be involved in treating a person during their lifetime and to exchange information efficiently without violating the individual’s privacy concerns. This will dramatically improve the healthcare rights of every citizen of Pakistan.