Querying a Clinical Data Warehouse for Combinations of Clinical and Imaging Data

This study aims to show the feasibility and benefit of single queries in a research data warehouse combining data from a hospital’s clinical and imaging systems. We used a comprehensive integration of a production picture archiving and communication system (PACS) with a clinical data warehouse (CDW) for research to create a system that allows data from both domains to be queried jointly with a single query. To achieve this, we mapped the DICOM information model to the extended entity–attribute–value (EAV) data model of a CDW, which allows data linkage and query constraints on multiple levels: the patient, the encounter, a document, and a group level. Accordingly, we have integrated DICOM metadata directly into CDW and linked it to existing clinical data. We included data collected in 2016 and 2017 from the Department of Internal Medicine in this analysis for two query inquiries from researchers targeting research about a disease and in radiology. We obtained quantitative information about the current availability of combinations of clinical and imaging data using a single multilevel query compiled for each query inquiry. We compared these multilevel query results to results that linked data at a single level, resulting in a quantitative representation of results that was up to 112% and 573% higher. An EAV data model can be extended to store data from clinical systems and PACS on multiple levels to enable combined querying with a single query to quickly display actual frequency data.