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Temporal Expressiveness in Querying a Time-stamp— based Clinical Database

Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.

Corresdpondence and reprints: Daniel J. Nigrin, MD, MS, Division of Endocrinology, Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115; e-mail: <nigrin_d{at}a1.tch.harvard.edu>.

Received for publication: 04/13/99; accepted for publication: 10/26/99.

Most health care databases include time-stamped instant data as the only temporal representation of patient information. Many previous efforts have attempted to provide frameworks in which medical databases could be queried in relation to time. These, however, have required either a sophisticated database representation of time, including time intervals, or a time-stamp-based database coupled with a nonstandard temporal query language. In this work, the authors demonstrate how their previously described data retrieval application, DXtractor, can be used as a database querying application with expressive power close to that of temporal databases and temporal query languages, using only standard SQL and existing time-stamp-based repositories. DXtractor provides the ability to compose temporal queries through an interface that is understood by nonprogramming medical personnel. Not all temporal constructs are easily implemented using this framework; nonetheless, DXtractor's temporal capabilities provide a significant improvement in the temporal expressivity accessible to clinicians using standard time-stamped clinical databases.

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