Wireless transfer of sensor data into electronic health records

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore how wireless transfer of sensor data can be implemented in existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. Blood glucose data from people with diabetes Type 1 has been selected as the case.As proof of concept, a prototype for sending blood glucose measurements into an EHR system was developed for the DIPS EHR system. For the prototype to be transferable to a general setting, care was taken not to introduce any additional workload for the diabetes nurses or the diabetes Type 1 patients. In the prototype, the transfer of blood glucose data is automatic and invisible to the user, and the data is presented to the nurses within the existing DIPS laboratory module.To determine whether deployment of such a system would present any risks or hazards to patients (medical or financial), a risk analysis was performed. The analysis indicates that storing blood glucose values in the patient's EHR does not represent any significantly increased risks for the diabetes patient.The study shows that existing EHR systems are well suited to receive sensor data. The three main EHR systems in Norwegian hospitals are all supported with application programming interfaces (APIs), enabling external vendors to add modules. These APIs are sufficient to implement modules for receiving sensor data. However, none of the systems currently have commercially available modules for receiving such data.