Comments on: CouchDB could be a viable alternative to relational databases for storing patient data

By: Phlebotomist

Phlebotomist — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:36:35 +0000

Seems to me that a lot of systems could use your expertise. When it comes to the healthcare system I find that many technologies used for databases and uniformity are simply out dated. I will admit I like your thoughts on this subject, seems to me like you may be on to something.

By: Jim Tarvid

Jim Tarvid — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:11:11 +0000

I suspect Couchdb is ready but we are less so. The proliferation of schemas in health information systems and constant change should convince us that RDBs are a hammer and everything looks like a nail.

On Ubuntu
apt-get install couchdb
change the bind address to the machines local ip and you are up and running.
You will need a wrapper for security.
Do it again and replication will provide backup.

Isomorphic with S3 so you have a place in the cloud if you want one.

By: Derek Williams

Derek Williams — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:04:01 +0000

I’ve also starting design work on an open source patient management system (I’ve built a closed system before using php/xml/tomcat/hibernate/postgres). I would be interested to know of any progress. From the little I know of Mumps, it looks to heavy for what the lightweight application that I’m designing. I was going to use CouchDB and either PHP/CI or Ruby/Merb. I’m not comfortable programing in Erlang (yet).

By: boxing equipment

boxing equipment — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 07:23:45 +0000

A very impressive technique other than relational databases for the storage. I will definitely try this.

By: Jens Moller

Jens Moller — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:48:03 +0000

I would love to see your CouchDB application when it is available. Please post a link to it when its ready for others to test.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:30:52 +0000

I do find this rather ironic. On the one hand you rightly mention the flexibility afforded by the Mumps technology that is incumbent in today’s most successful healthcare IT system, and then you suggest it’s replaced by….well, something very similar (a hierarchical schemaless database) that has no track record, no benefits over what’s already easily achievable with Mumps, and… no security worth a light!

The fact is that the neo-hierarchical databases such as CouchDB are reinventing a wheel that Mumps has established many years ago.

See http://www.outoftheslipstream.com/node/125 and http://www.slideshare.net/george.james/mumps-the-internet-scale-database-presentation

Here’s a better idea: stick with what has demonstrably worked. If people understood this, perhaps we wouldn’t be seeing stories such as this where “experts” have encouraged the spending of vast amounts of tax payers money to replace that old Mumps stuff with something “more modern”: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/01/27/234448/public-accounts-committee-criticises-npfit.htm

Oh and check out M/DB (http://www.mgateway.com/mdb.html) which demonstrates that a secure, high performance and highly scalable REST-based schemaless, hierarchical database (in this case a SimpleDB clone) can be implemented very easily using Mumps.

By: Shahid N. Shah

Shahid N. Shah — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:54:18 +0000

Great point, Ollie. I’ve used BDB so many times and it’s such a part of my daily routine that I didn’t even consider others might not know about it.

I’ve looked at Voldemort and other projects and they are quite intriguing as well.

While you’re right that CouchDB is not quite ready for prime-time, what I like specifically about CouchDB is that it’s got built-in distribution and replication with standard database-type queries and ACID facilities. That would make data integration in RHIOs or collaborative clinical groupware quite easy without resorting to HL7 and more complicated tasks.

By: Ollie Jones

Ollie Jones — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:57:38 +0000

Very interesting post, thanks!

CouchDB may be a little young for mission-critical deployment for key-value storage, but BerkeleyDB (BDB) is ready for prime time. It’s been available and open source for many years, and has appropriate APIs for all kinds of application frameworks. Oracle Corp. snapped it up recently, but that didn’t affect its open source availability.

A massively scalable key-value framework based on BDB has been released as open source by LinkedIn.com; it’s called Project-Voldemort.com. It probably can handle large scale health-care records; not sure about the security aspects.

This whole area really needs a solid open-source community!

By: Shahid N. Shah

Shahid N. Shah — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:56:13 +0000

Kamal, I do suggest you release the code as open source. I for one would love to see it and I know others would, too.

By: Kamal

Kamal — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:57:49 +0000

shahid,

this is very informative and timely. we have used a key-value based schema for our application database which has made it very easy to extend the same. plus we have used REST to support querying over the web. we are now toying with the idea of creating and releasing the entire data model and querying framework as an open-source toolkit called Moksha (meaning liberation in sanskrit – aka freeing data from the confines of rigid models and increasing its liquidity).
eager to see your work with couchDB. will keep you posted.