46 PART II Prerequisites for an HCM
Get in the Data: The Date Input
The logical component »data input« bundles functions and interfaces in order to
receive data from external systems and process it in such a way that it can be used
for all further processes. The HCM system should therefore provide the following
functions and interfaces, depending on the needs of the healthcare facility:
✔✔Acquiring all possible file formats of medical data that are generated in a
healthcare facility and that are of interest to users in the context of patient
treatment.
✔✔Reliable assignment of the acquired data to patients, cases, examination orders
and similar contexts. Any identification markers that already exist for
the assignment at data reception should be used. If this is not the case, the
input component of the HCM system must provide the necessary means to
establish the mentioned relationships in other ways, for example manually.
✔✔Processing of additional information (metadata) transmitted along with
medical data. Documents, images, biosignals and videos contain the same
information in different representations due to the different file formats.
The goal, however, is to manage all data in the HCM system as a whole.
Therefore,
the component »data input« should be able to transfer metadata
with different representations into an internal data structure. In this way,
the data can be used as a whole. This enables all further processes, such as
filtering and searching data while being displayed, automatically sending
certain documents or assigning access rights based on document
properties.
In many cases, incoming data does not include accurate or complete metadata
in order to enable all subsequent processes. In this case, the component
»data input« requires functions to add the missing meta information.
✔✔Reception of data with digital signature or time stamp: in order to ensure
the integrity of documents, they are provided with so-called qualified
digital signatures or time stamps. These signatures and time stamps
must be verified for validity when data is received. If a check fails, the
input component must mark the corresponding documents and handle
them separately. The HCM system should also provide methods for
applying qualified digital signatures and time stamps to unsigned
documents.
Qualified digital signatures and time stamps are intended, among
other things, to ensure that violations of the data integrity of documents
can be detected immediately. They are based on crypto