NURS 6411: Information and Knowledge Management | Week 3

Each task that physicians, nurses, and nurse informaticists undertake within their respective positions generates specific data sets and requires explicit data analyses methods. Therefore, data modeling and database design require a sensitivity to specialized focuses within a health care organization. Consider Mary, for example, a nurse at a large private clinic. Her office manager has asked her to verify how many of the babies born in the last six months were later examined by pediatricians associated with the clinic. What data modeling conditions have to be taken into consideration when designing a database that suits Mary’s task?

This week, you analyze the benefits and challenges associated with data modeling in a health care setting. You also consider how to mitigate database design issues.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Evaluate benefits and challenges of data modeling within health care settings
• Analyze strategies to mitigate database design issues

Learning Resources

Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

Required Readings

Coronel, C. & Morris, S. (2017). Database systems: Design, implementation, and management (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

• Chapter 2, “Data Models” (pp. 35-64)During database design, the objective is to formulate a system where data is stored for optimum access and use. By providing a history of data modeling’s development, the authors build an understanding of the contemporary database models introduced in this chapter.
• Chapter 9, Sections 9.4–9.9, “Database Design” (pp. 457-477)This section of Chapter 9 deals with conceptualizing database design. It explores all the factors and conditions that need to be considered to ensure that the final product satisfies the end user.

Rux, E., & Borchert, T. (2010). You have how many spreadsheets? Computers in Libraries, 30(8), 21–25.

In this article, the authors provide an example of the development of their database, revealing the successes and missteps they encountered during the process. Managing electronic resources requires a system designed to accommodate the storage and flow of necessary data.

Roberts, A. L., & Sewell, J. P. (2011). Data aggregation: A case study. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 29(1), 3–7.

The authors of this article address the need for nurses to adapt to database use. As a condition of the HITECH Act, changes in nursing instruction, data capturing, and health care procedures are required to accommodate the increasing reliance on electronic health records in nursing.

Discussion: Data Modeling and Database Design NURS6411

The use of databases can significantly improve an organization’s ability to access, share, and apply relevant information. However, despite the wealth of data available in a database, its value is greatly dependent on its design. Designing a database that creates logical data relationships for the end users ensures the best conditions for developing information and knowledge for real-world application.

This Discussion focuses on the importance of thoughtful data modeling and database design. You also consider strategies for mitigating design issues.

To prepare:

• Review the information in this week’s Learning Resources on data modeling and database design.
• Reflect on how you have seen these concepts evidenced in a health care organization’s use of databases.
• Consider the benefits and challenges of data modeling, both generally and within an organization with which you are familiar.
• Review the six different issues with database design described in “Data Aggregation: A Case Study,” found in this week’s Learning Resources. Have you experienced any of these in your own database use? How could an organization avoid such issues through planning?
• Select one of the issues and conduct additional research using the Walden Library to locate an article that addresses your selected issue and provides insights into how it can be avoided.

By Day 3

Post the benefits and challenges of data modeling both generally and within a health care organization. Describe the database design issue you selected and briefly summarize your findings (include your reference). Suggest strategies for how this issue could be mitigated in the database planning phase.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days using one or more of the following approaches:

• Expand on your colleagues’ postings by providing additional strategies for mitigating the database design issue.
• Share an insight from having read your colleagues’ postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.
• Make a suggestion based on additional evidence drawn from readings or after synthesizing multiple postings. Discussion: Data Modeling and Database Design NURS6411

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION;

Data modeling and database design

Introduction

Data modeling is the process of creating a logical data model from your source data. It’s one of the first steps in database design, and it’s essential if you want to improve performance, reliability and security of your databases. In this article we will discuss how to do data modeling and what types there are available on the market today

Data modeling

Data modeling is the process of creating data models. A data model represents a real-world entity, such as an employee or customer, by describing its attributes and relationships with other entities. The primary goal of data modeling is to represent the business rules that describe how these entities interact with each other in their real world applications.

Data models are used to design databases because they can be used to create a logical representation of your data that makes sense for everyone involved in the project (including you). This logical representation includes rules about what types of information should be stored where within your database so it will make sense at any level within an application layer from simple web pages all the way up through complex enterprise applications like ERP systems or CRM systems.”

Logical data models

Logical data models are used to describe the data structure and relationships in a database. They can be used for any type of database, regardless of the physical storage format (e.g., hierarchical or relational).

Instead of specifying which hardware platform you’ll use, logical modelers focus on describing how your information will be organized using various types of tables (and other structures), including:

• Tuples Tables with rows that contain one value per row; these tables often have columns named after each attribute/column name pair in your table’s definitions (e.g., “name” and “address”).

• Relational databases These allow multiple tables to share common attributes through foreign keys referencing other records in related tables; for example, if we wanted our customers’ names with addresses stored together in one place instead of having them scattered all over our system like they currently are then we would need something like this built into our system which makes sense because they’re related anyway so why not put them together?

Physical data models

• Physical data models are the lowest level of abstraction in the database design process. They are used to define the physical structure of a database and provide details about its storage and retrieval, including indexes, data types, constraints, indexes on tables and views.

• Physical data models are more detailed than logical (logical) or entity relationship diagrams (ERDs). They describe how information is physically stored rather than just what it means logically. This can be important because it helps you understand how your application will need to operate when it finally gets deployed onto actual hardware or software systems that support SQL transactions.”

Entity relationship diagrams

Entity relationship diagrams (ERDs) are a graphical representation of the entities and their relationships in a database. The ERDs can be used to show the relationships between entities, which can be useful for understanding how data is stored in your database or what types of queries you might run on it.

Database design

Database design is the process of planning and organizing a database. The goal of database design is to make sure that data is stored in a way that makes it easy for users to use, while also ensuring that they have access to all their information.

Database design includes defining entities, attributes, relationships and constraints on them. It also involves understanding how these elements work together as part of an overall schema model which forms the foundation for your application’s performance requirements (e.g., speed). In other words: “What can I do with this information?”

The point here isn’t just about making sure you know what kinds of questions might come up when people use your product; it’s also about making sure everyone has access to all their data at any given time so there aren’t any nasty surprises when someone wants something from one section but not another.”

Nulls in database design

Nulls are used to represent missing data.

Nulls in database design can be used to represent any type of missing value, including:

• No data (NULL)

• Empty string for non-numerical values (NOT NULL)

Empty string for numerical values (NULL) Nulls are used in database design to represent missing data.

Data modeling is one of the first phases of database design.

Data modeling is one of the first phases of database design. It involves developing a data model for a business and the process of creating a logical or conceptual model that can be used to create entity relationship diagrams (ERDs).

• What is data modeling?

Data modeling is an approach to managing information in computer systems by simplifying or representing it in terms of abstract entities and their relationships with each other.

Conclusion

We created a simple database design, but with it we also learned how to create a logical data model. We used entity relationship diagrams (ERDs) and physical data models to create our databases. In this article, you learned about the benefits of using ERDs as well as some of their limitations. You now know that physical data models are not meant for every situation because they can produce errors in your database design if used incorrectly.