title: A Hybrid EAV-Relational Model for Consistent and Scalable Capture of Clinical Research Data.
abstract: Many clinical research databases are built for specific purposes and their design is often guided by the requirements of their particular setting. Not only does this lead to issues of interoperability and reusability between research groups in the wider community but, within the project itself, changes and additions to the system could be implemented using an ad hoc approach, which may make the system difficult to maintain and even more difficult to share. In this paper, we outline a hybrid Entity-Attribute-Value and relational model approach for modelling data, in light of frequently changing requirements, which enables the back-end database schema to remain static, improving the extensibility and scalability of an application. The model also facilitates data reuse. The methods used build on the modular architecture previously introduced in the CURe project.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
authors.forename: Omar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.affiliation: Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
authors.forename: Sarah N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Lim Choi Keung
authors.affiliation: Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
authors.forename: Theodoros N
authors.initials: TN
authors.lastname: Arvanitis
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003628:Database Management Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D066275:Health Information Exchange; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000379:methods; D008962:Models, Theoretical