A concept of a generalized electronic patient record for personalized medicine

The treatment process of tumor patients is supported by different stand-alone ePR and clinical decision support (CDS) systems. We developed a concept for the integration of a specialized ePR for head and neck tumor treatment and a DICOM-RT based CDS system for radiation therapy in order to improve the clinical workflow and therapy outcome. A communication interface for the exchange of information that is only available in the respective other system will be realized. This information can then be used for further assistance and clinical decision support functions. In the first specific scenario radiation therapy related information such as radiation dose or tumor size are transmitted from the CDS to the ePR to extend the information base. This information can then be used for the automatic creation of clinical documents or retrospective clinical trial studies. The second specific use case is the transmission of follow-up information from the ePR to the CDS system. The CDS system uses the current patient’s anatomy and planned radiation dose distribution for the selection of other patients that already received radiation therapy. Afterwards, the patients are grouped according to the therapy outcome so that the physician can compare radiation parameters and therapy results for choosing the best possible therapy for the patient. In conclusion this research project shows that centralized information availability in tumor therapy is important for the improvement of the patient treatment process and the development of sophisticated decision support functions.