Best Practices and Innovative Scenarios of Integrated Patient Data Management to Improve Continuity of Care and Scientific Research

Clinical data have strong features of complexity and multi-disciplinarity. Clinical data are generated both from the documentation of physicians＇ interactions with the patient and by diagnostic systems. During the care process, a number of different actors and roles （physicians, specialists, nurses, etc.） have the need to access patient data and document clinical activities in different moments and settings. Thus, data sharing and flexible aggregation based on different users＇ needs have become more and more important for supporting continuity of care at home, at hospitals, at outpatient clinics. In this paper, the authors identify and describe needs and challenges for patient data management at provider level and regional- （or inter-organizational-） level, because nowadays sharing patient data is needed to improve continuity and quality of care. For each level, the authors describe state-of-the-art Information and Communication Technology solutions to collect, manage, aggregate and share patient data. For each level some examples of best practices and solution scenarios being implemented in the Italian Healthcare setting are described as well.