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Application retirement and long-term preservation for clinical information
AZ Alma uses Docbyte Vault as a long-term preservation layer for clinical and administrative information. The archive is separated from the operational source systems in which the information was created, while retrieval remains available from the hospital’s clinical workflow.
The case shows how a hospital can separate day-to-day healthcare applications from long-term preservation. This can reduce dependency on individual source systems and help keep clinical information available when systems change.
Who:
AZ Alma is a regional hospital in Eeklo, Belgium.
Challenge:
- Clinical information may still be needed long after the operational system in which it was created has changed, been upgraded or been retired.
- AZ Alma needed an archive approach designed to support continued access, access control, retention and future interoperability requirements without forcing historical information to remain dependent on ageing applications.
Docbyte solution:
Docbyte Vault provides the hospital’s long-term preservation layer. Clinical information is received from operational source systems through the hospital’s integration flow, then preserved independently of the original application.
Retrieved information remains available through a viewer embedded in the electronic medical record. Clinicians can consult preserved information from their familiar workflow, while the archive remains independent from the source application.
AZ Alma also uses Vault Review for scanned records and records received by email before those records move further into the archive process.
Architecture:
The architecture separates three layers:
- Operational clinical source systems that create or provide information.
- HL7 and Mirth as the hospital's interoperability and routing layer.
- Docbyte Vault as the preservation layer for long-term storage and retrieval.
This separation reduces dependencies between source applications, interoperability services and long-term preservation. New information flows can be added through the integration layer while users continue to retrieve preserved information through the EMR.
Information covered:
The model supports multiple clinical and administrative information sources, including laboratory results, radiology-related reports, EMR-generated reports, scanned records, records received by email and other information classes that need to remain available over time.
What this approach supports:
- Clinical information can remain available beyond the life cycle of individual source systems.
- Archived records can be retrieved from the hospital's EMR workflow.
- The hospital can reduce dependency on legacy applications solely for historical access.
- The archive approach can support traceability across ingest, storage and retrieval.
- The preservation model can be extended to additional information types over time.
Supporting future EHDS requirements
The European Health Data Space places greater emphasis on making electronic health data available beyond individual systems. AZ Alma’s architecture may support this direction by preserving information independently of source systems. Any use for EHDS-related exchange would depend on the hospital’s wider interoperability environment and applicable requirements.
Docbyte Vault is not the exchange platform itself. It fulfils a different role: preserving the information so that it remains available for later retrieval.
Application retirement in healthcare
Application retirement is not only an IT clean-up exercise. In healthcare, historical information may still be needed for care delivery, legal and evidentiary purposes, regulatory obligations and future data-sharing requirements. AZ Alma’s approach illustrates how long-term preservation can support changes to a hospital’s application landscape while maintaining control of records that must be retained.
