Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40273445›Full record

ArticleJMIR medical informatics2025

Integrating Health Care Data in an Informatics for Integrating Biology & the Bedside (i2b2) Model Persisted Through Elasticsearch: Design, Implementation, and Evaluation in a French University Hospital.

Romain Griffier, Fleur Mougin, Vianney Jouhet

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in JMIR medical informatics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Romain GriffierService d'Information Médicale, Informatique et Archivistique Médicale (IAM), Pôle de Santé Publique, Bordeaux University Hospital, Bordeaux, France.ORCID 0000-0002-1096-137X
Fleur MouginTeam AHeaD, Inserm Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, UMR 1219, Bordeaux University, Bordeaux, France.ORCID 0000-0002-7436-3010
Vianney JouhetService d'Information Médicale, Informatique et Archivistique Médicale (IAM), Pôle de Santé Publique, Bordeaux University Hospital, Bordeaux, France.ORCID 0000-0001-5272-2265

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe volume of digital data in health care is continually growing. In addition to its use in health care, the health data collected can also serve secondary purposes, such as research. In this context, clinical data warehouses (CDWs) provide the infrastructure and organization necessary to enhance the secondary use of health data. Various data models have been proposed for structuring data in a CDW, including the Informatics for Integrating Biology & the Bedside (i2b2) model, which relies on a relational database. However, this persistence approach can lead to performance issues when executing queries on massive data sets.

objectiveThis study aims to describe the necessary transformations and their implementation to enable i2b2's search engine to perform the phenotyping task using data persistence in a NoSQL Elasticsearch database.

methodsThis study compares data persistence in a standard relational database with a NoSQL Elasticsearch database in terms of query response and execution performance (focusing on counting queries based on structured data, numerical data, and free text, including temporal filtering) as well as material resource requirements. Additionally, the data loading and updating processes are described.

resultsWe propose adaptations to the i2b2 model to accommodate the specific features of Elasticsearch, particularly its inability to perform joins between different indexes. The implementation was tested and evaluated within the CDW of Bordeaux University Hospital, which contains data on 2.5 million patients and over 3 billion observations. Overall, Elasticsearch achieves shorter query execution times compared with a relational database, with particularly significant performance gains for free-text searches. Additionally, compared with an indexed relational database (including a full-text index), Elasticsearch requires less disk space for storage.

conclusionsWe demonstrate that implementing i2b2 with Elasticsearch is feasible and significantly improves query performance while reducing disk space usage. This implementation is currently in production at Bordeaux University Hospital.

Indexed as

Data WarehousingMedical InformaticsDatabases, FactualElectronic Health RecordsFranceHospitals, UniversityHumansclinical data warehousedata persistenceElasticsearchhealth data integrationi2b2medical informatics

Identifiers

PMID40273445
PMCPMC12062766

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.