title: Estimating frequency of disease findings from combined hospital databases: a UMLS project.
abstract: Merging data from the Salt Lake VA hospital database and the LDS hospital HELP system into a UMLS sponsored unified patient database has demonstrated that distribution of variables within a disease is hospital independent. Although disease prevalence is clearly not the same among hospitals, analysis of data within a disease group across hospitals can be done using such a merged database. This unified patient database would allow study of unusual diseases not possible using data from a single institution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Informatics, University of Utah, School of Medicine, Salt Lake City.
authors.forename: L S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huff
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bouhaddou
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bray
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Warner
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D017432:Unified Medical Language System; D014589:Utah