What is a Data Mart?

2197 Words5 Pages

INTRODUCTION-WHAT IS A DATA MART?
A data mart is a collection of data in a customized format in a data warehouse focused on a specific report or functional area such as hospital’s census, hospital’s charge activity, labor and delivery outcomes, or Nursing quality measures. (Oracle, 2012) Data marts are usually build by department of information services or an EHR vendor. Data marts usually draw data from more than one source. These data sources can be internal systems used by operational units or external sources. The internal source doesn’t always have to be an internal operational system; it can be another internal data warehouse. The data contained in a data mart is single-subject focused, can vary in sizes and complexity, although it would be limited in scope. (Oracle, 2012)
Data marts are classified in two categories. Dependent data marts draw data from a center data warehouse, sometimes known as enterprise data warehouse, where as independent data marts draw data from operational systems or external sources. For the purpose of this presentation, we are promoting the use of dependent data marts because of the benefits of the Extraction-Transformation-and Loading (ETL) process is much similar in that the data is already clean, summarized, and loaded into the data warehouse. The ETL process consists of mainly identification of the subset of relevant data and moving it to the data mart. With independent data marts on the other hand, the ELT process has to be managed in its entirety, meaning that the data has to be staged every time to be normalized, integrated, and in dimensional formats. (Ariyachandra & Watson, 2012) For these reasons, I am advocating building dependent data marts to maximize performance and to increa...

... middle of paper ...

...rovider can combine hospital data with clinic visit data via automated systems that populates the data marts. The data can be used for comparative purposes for individuals utilize provider’s clinic sites and hospital units for the episode of care. Relevant health activities are captured and used to analyze the frequency of ED visits, hospitalization, and clinic visits to see PCPs. This data is collected in a uniform format that is readily accessible and identifiable for your organization’s asthma patients or patients with other chronic illnesses. Data marts can be utilized for health care system utilization review, access to care, clinical outcomes measures, business trend analysis, and other operational uses. Data usage from deployment of data marts is with undefined limits in learning of population and processes for improved efficiency and coordination of care.

Open Document