Continuity of care with HL7 v3 care record for oncology nursing.

Unlabelled: The Clinical Data Ware House needs to meet three functions: reporting quality indicators, clinical research, and continuity of care. This paper reports on one function, namely the development and testing of data exchange for continuity of nursing care for oncology patients. The proof of principle was carried out using system analysis, requirements setting, system design, system development and experiment with the application of Health Level 7 version 3 Care Record electronic message. A successful testing of the Care Record message was conducted, using a case based data-subset for oncology nursing care including personal data, pain, weight and vital signs, among others.

Conclusion: The development illustrated that the system components facilitate electronic data exchange from hospital to home care, allowing home care nurses to use received clinical data in their local system. In an incremental approach this data exchange can be enhanced to meet all data and all systems requirements.