MediData Innovates Healthcare IT: Enabling Top-Tier Hospitals to Balance Operations and Data Integration

Since the initiation of China’s reform and opening-up policy, the country’s healthcare informatization sector has evolved over several decades. From Hospital Information Systems (HIS) and Laboratory Information Systems (LIS) to Electronic Medical Records (EMR), hospitals have achieved significant improvements in their level of informatization. Nevertheless, each developmental stage has presented its own unique challenges, and the current informatization landscape continues to face numerous difficulties.

On one hand, the wide variety of hospital information systems operate independently, making it difficult to utilize large volumes of data; on the other hand, issues with data quality and completeness also pose challenges for clinical research.

Frontline hospital workers have the most authority to speak on the use of medical data.

When discussing the challenges of data application, Mi Yiqun, Director of the Outpatient Department at Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University (hereinafter referred to as “Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital”), has profound insights. Since initiating its informatization construction in 2002, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital has integrated more than 70 clinical systems from over 10 vendors, providing robust support for the hospital’s clinical operations and management.

However, each department utilizes different operational systems, and the data standards across these systems are inconsistent, resulting in fragmented data storage. “To access the data, physicians must manually locate it rather than retrieve it directly; in contemporary terms, this means there are numerous ‘information silos.’”

Furthermore, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital is characterized by its “three highs”: numerous floors, departments, and physicians. Due to the hospital’s expansive scale, administrators cannot monitor in real time the working status of physicians, resource availability, or operational conditions. For instance, they may be unaware of locations with insufficient resources or outpatient windows experiencing high patient traffic and long queues. If such issues are not reflected in real time, it will lead to a disconnect in management.

Based on this, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital proposed the need to build a data center, aiming to integrate data without disrupting normal hospital operations. “We cannot tolerate system failures or lag during clinical consultations. The administrative department requires access to real-time data while ensuring that normal hospital operations remain unaffected.”

In 2019, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital partnered with Shanghai Midi Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Midi Information”) to construct a data center, thereby rebuilding the existing data center architecture.

Midi Information has been dedicated to cutting-edge research and practical applications of medical big data and artificial intelligence in clinical research. Currently, the company collaborates with renowned hospitals and experts in China to undertake multiple national and provincial-level research projects. It has filed numerous invention patents covering areas such as clinical drug trials, multi-center clinical trial platforms, multi-center imaging platforms, and hospital clinical data centers. At present, Midi Information is committed to standardizing hospital data, establishing robust data security frameworks, and building intellectual property management systems for hospitals, providing comprehensive solutions tailored to healthcare institutions.

In the construction of the data center, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital and Midi Information each fulfilled their respective responsibilities, collaborating closely as both mentors and partners. Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital contributed robust physical infrastructure, while Midi Information provided advanced technology and comprehensive business consulting services.

As the contractor for the data center, Midi Information adopted the database’s built-in software tools, which not only reduced the hospital’s costs for third-party data exchange platforms but also ensured real-time data transmission.

Currently, the information systems in many hospitals are too tightly coupled, resulting in weak independence between systems. The original intention of Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital in establishing a data center was to break data monopolies, allow more high-quality vendors to enter the hospital, inject new vitality into the hospital’s informatization construction, and provide support for both vendors and the clinical development of the hospital. At the same time, it aims to alleviate doctor-patient tensions and build a data integration platform for clinicians, experts, and the hospital.

Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital and Midi Information have established a set of data standard interface specifications to ensure the consistency and accuracy of data collection.

Third-party vendors must comply with relevant standard requirements to gain access to hospitals. This measure helps gradually break down barriers between disparate databases and removes many technical obstacles.

Hospitals will propose standards that are better matched to the specific circumstances of different vendors. To this end, the data center has prepared three sets of standards: the commonly used HL7 standard, an internal hospital standard, and the CDISC standard for clinical trials.

Based on the data center, the hospital has integrated systems from more than 12 vendors, progressively achieving platformization of the data center, and has built application systems such as the outpatient management cockpit, economic operations platform, performance management, and scientific research.

The construction of the data center has broken through the constraint that information system development must revolve around Hospital Information System (HIS) data, providing an open, standardized data platform for hospitals to introduce high-quality vendors and build advanced systems. Notably, multiple honors have been awarded based on applications and case studies leveraging this data center.

In 2019, at the Second National Smart Healthcare Competition organized by *Physicians' Daily*, the Data Center was honored as one of the Top Ten Practical Cases in “Internet + Medical Health.” The “Outpatient Real-Time Monitoring System Based on Management Cockpit” subsequently received the Second Prize in the 7th Shanghai Medical Staff Technological Innovation “Starlight Plan” and the Silver Award for Outstanding Invention at the Shanghai Excellent Invention Selection Competition.

In addition, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital and Midea Information have jointly developed a clinical trial platform based on the data center.

Currently, the level of clinical practice in China is relatively weak and remains at the stage of process-oriented management. From information registration, ethical review, and consultation management to data interpretation, existing systems merely digitize paper-based records, achieving paperless operations but lacking comprehensive process management for the entire clinical trial.

The clinical trial platform comprises three core components: an expert knowledge base, a clinical data processing engine, and a clinical decision-making engine. Currently, 13 clinical trial projects across eight specialized fields are operational on the platform. According to the person in charge, Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital will leverage this platform to conduct real-world studies and Phase I, II, and III clinical trials in the future.