Clinical Transaction Repository

A Clinical Transaction Repository (CTR) stores transactions as compared to a CDR that stores results. Transactions are captured by “listening” to the HL-7 stream from ancillary systems and capturing transactions to a database.

Information regarding the location of the result associated with the transaction is stored with the transaction. Here is an example of a CTR record: MRN ! Date/Time ! Category ! Description ! Physician ! Status ! Service ! Accession. The "Service" field describes the service used to retrieve a result and the field "Accession" is used to identify the specific result.

Note that all records in the CTR database are the same no matter the type of transaction being stored. One must compare this design with the design of a CDR database to fully appreciate the difference in complexity between the two.

The storage requirements of a CTR is much less than a CDR. The reason is only information about result is stored in the CTR. The actual result is stored on another system.

List of results do not access any ancillary system, only the CTR. Ancillary systems are queried only when a user requests to view a result. This is why a CTR puts much less of a load on ancillary systems as compared to a Virtual Database approach.

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