Many hospitals need to track trends about patient outcomes to improve healthcare delivery. However, they often lack the tools necessary to achieve that goal. At University Hospital, the database management systems (DBMS) administrator is responsible for creating and maintaining databases. Several departments have asked him to develop real-time analytics and visualizations to track patient trends. These real-time analytics and visualizations would be based on standard simple queries. They also want to keep track of all the data they document and have had trouble creating a system that is modeled well for easy access.
Data Integration: An ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process would be implemented to regularly pull data from the main operational database, clean it, and load it into the star schema. This process can be automated to run at frequent intervals, providing near real-time data for analysis without impacting the performance of the core patient documentation system.
Visualization Tools: To provide the departments with the requested real-time dashboards, the administrator should connect the data warehouse to a business intelligence (BI) platform like Tableau or Power BI. These tools can easily run the simple queries against the star schema and create interactive, customizable visualizations that are directly accessible to hospital staff.
Solution for Data Access and Storage
The departments also need a system that is well-modeled for easy access and keeps track of all documented data. The proposed solution addresses this by distinguishing the analytical system from the transactional one.
Operational Database: The hospital's primary database for patient documentation should remain a highly normalized relational database. This design, with its focus on data integrity and minimizing redundancy, is ideal for storing all patient records in a structured and secure manner. The separation ensures that the resource-intensive queries for real-time analytics do not slow down the essential day-to-day operations of the hospital's documentation system.
In summary, the best course of action is to implement a separate data warehouse with a star schema for analytics and visualizations, while maintaining the primary, normalized database for comprehensive data storage and operational access. This two-system approach provides a robust, scalable, and efficient solution that meets both of the hospital's core needs.
Sample Answer
The DBMS administrator at University Hospital faces the dual challenge of creating a system that allows for real-time analytics and visualizations while also ensuring all patient data is well-modeled for easy access. The best solution is to implement a data warehouse that is separate from the primary operational database.
Solution for Data Modeling and Real-Time Analytics
To address the need for real-time analytics and visualizations based on simple queries, the administrator should design a dedicated analytical database, or data warehouse. This system would be modeled using a star schema, which is specifically optimized for reporting.
Star Schema: The model would consist of a central fact table containing key metrics, such as patient outcomes, length of stay, or treatment costs. This fact table would be surrounded by several smaller dimension tables containing descriptive information like patient demographics, hospital departments, and physician details. This structure simplifies the queries needed for visualizations, as all the necessary information can be accessed with a few simple joins.