APPLYING THE OBJECT PARADIGM TO A CENTRALIZED DATABASE FOR A CARDIOLOGY DIVISION

In order to master the overwhelming quantity of data produced by the d ifferent laboratories of our Cardiology Division, we are presently dev eloping a centralized database. Our aim is to improve the quality of d iagnoses and therapies by constituting patient centered medical files integrating logically the results of the different examinations and al lowing for a rapid access to the patient data. The database has to be accessible from an heterogeneous set of PC, Macintoshes and UNIX works tations. It must have an ergonomic graphic user interface and generate reports which can be sent to the patient physician. It is well known that the requirements for a medical database make its conceptual analy sis very difficult. As medical knowledge continually evolves, the exam ination protocols change and, therefore, the data sets have to be upda ted. The maintenance of classical databases is usually expensive becau se it requires specialized staff to alter the database structure and t o adapt the user interface. To allow for flexibility, modularity, code reusability and reliability, the object paradigm was applied to a cla ssical relational database. Thanks to the combination of both data str ucture and behavior in single entities, it is possible to build generi c user interfaces which can be easily tailored to the needs of every l aboratory of our Cardiology Division.