TempR-PDM: a conceptual temporal relational model for managing patient data

TLDR

Managing time‑varying data is challenging in relational databases, which provide limited built‑in support, and although many temporal extensions exist, effective data management remains critical for improving healthcare quality amid rising costs and privacy concerns. The study proposes a conceptual temporal model that handles time‑varying attributes in relational databases using minimal temporal attributes. The model is built on a health‑care ontology of patient vital data, activities, and treatments, is easy to define and manage, and has been implemented on a patient database with a workflow for hospital patient management. Implementation on a patient database demonstrates the model’s feasibility and supports a workflow for managing patients in a hospital setting.

Abstract

Time is one of the most difficult aspects to handle in real world applications, especially in database systems. Relational database management systems proposed by Codd offer very little built-in support for managing time varying data and theory of temporal semantics. Many temporal extensions of the relational model have been proposed and some of them are also implemented. The proposed system is based on an ontology of health Care terminology including patients vital data, activities and as well as the treatment data. We will propose a conceptual temporal model for handling time varying attributes in the relational database model with minimal temporal attributes. The proposed model is easy to define, manage and incorporates the important and relevant features in the target temporal relational model. Furthermore we have illustrated implementation of the model on patient database and also present the requirement analysis: work flow for managing patients in hospital environment. In response to rising health care costs, reliability, privacy, security and changing expectations concerning the quality of health care, data management is very important in improving health care services.