Incorporating theFamily into theElectronic Medical RecordSystem withaRelational Database Design

Background. A traditional family chart system means amedical record system inwhichtherecords ofall members belonging toafamily aredeposited inthe samefolder. Whenonepatient visits thepractice, all charts ofhisfamily areretrieved tofacilitate the physician's careofthefamily. Besides theindividual charts ofeachmember, thefamily folder also contains somecommonrecords ofthefamily [1]. However, to maintain paper-based family charts islaborious and time-consuming. Thedefinition ofafamily isoften arbitrary andthedynamic structure ofafamily cannot bemanaged efficiently. Thewayofcoding andfiling also affects thechart organization. Forthese reasons, thetraditional family chart system, though important forthefamily practice, seemstoenjoy verylimited popularity. Uptonow,there areonlyafewattempts tosimulate thefamily chart system onthebasis oftheelectronic medical record system. Moreover, they still stay within theearlier stages ofthedatabase management system (DBMS): (1)sequential file model: linking therecords offamily members bymeansoftelephone number or address; (2)hierarchical datamodel:coding the members ofafamily together according tohousehold ofresidence andlinking bythemainpart ofthecodes [2,3]. Although this twokinds ofmethods canretrieve therecords quickly onthecomputer, they cannotyet overcome all theshortcomings ofthetraditional family chart system. Thepurpose ofthis project istodevelop a newsystem ofthefamily-oriented electronic medical record utilizing arecursive relational database model. System. Thesystemconstructs a many-to-many recursive relationship. An intersection table (named Connect intheentity-relationship diagram below) is created tojointhemaintable Patient (Patient.ID = Connect.ID) ononehandandthecopyofthemain table Patient_l (Patient_J.ID = Connect.ID 1)onthe other. Patient ConctPtin: