Information systems have been deployed in different clinics and hospitals to preserve patient data. In order to promote the exchange of data among systems (and organizations), standards are being adopted for data exchange. Further, the clinics and hospitals aim to manage a patient's life-time history of records. A piece of the individual patient's medical record can be captured, stored, queried, and shared over a network through enrichment in information technology. Thus, electronic health records (EHRs) are being standardized for incorporating semantic interoperability. In addition, a generic storage structure is required to capture distinguished data requirements of various organizations. The generic structure must be capable of dealing with sparseness and frequent evolution behavior of EHRs. A subsequent step requires that healthcare professionals and patients get to use the EHRs, with the help of technological developments, such as workflow toolkits and new (easy) query languages. The goal is to present an overview of different approaches in understanding some current and challenging concepts in e-health informatics. Successful handling of these challenges will lead to improved quality in healthcare by reducing medical errors, decreasing costs, and enhancing patient care. The report is focused on the following objectives: (1) understanding the role of EHRs Databases; (2) understanding the need for standardization to enhance quality; (3) establishing interoperability in maintaining EHRs; (4) explicating a framework for standardization and interoperability (the openEHR architecture); (5) exploring various data models for managing EHRs; and (6) understanding the difficulties in querying data in EHR and e-health systems.
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