摘要：This paper outlines a generic methodology to rescuing the data from moribund clinical information systems by reverse engineering
the original data model, minimizing the data model for the archival system and migrating the data. The process was developed and
tested on five medical systems: three pathology legacy information systems (OMNI-Lab, HOSLAB and HOSREP), a cardiology
system (CARDS), and a Breast Screening system. If the data is only required for medico-legal purposes to conform to government
regulations then it is not necessary to build any specific interface to the database and access by conventional SQL interface is
reasonable. However if it is seen that there is potential to mine the data for research purposes then a more user-friendly interface
needs to be provided. We provide a proposal for a Clinical Data Analytics Language (CliniDAL) that serves this purpose.
