Patent ID: 8554577

Claim:
A non-transitory memory for storing health information for access by an application program executed on a data processor or data processing system, the non-transitory memory comprising: a data structure stored in the memory, the data structure including health information resident in a flat file database; a plurality of granule information data structures, each of the granule information data structures having a collection of generic attributes and a global unique identifier attribute; a plurality of clinical observations, each of the clinical observations including a collection of the granule information data structures, each of the clinical observations having a collection of clinical attributes, and each of the clinical observations being stored as a single database row entry with the global unique identifier attribute in a metadata column; a plurality of clinical information data structures, each of the clinical information data structures including a base information data structure and a clinical category information structure, each said base information data structure including the collection of granule information data structures which are included in at least one of the clinical observations, and each said clinical category information data structure mapping the clinical attributes of the said at least one of the clinical observations to the generic attributes of the granule information data structures included in said at least one of the clinical observations; and an attribute database in the base information database structure of each of the clinical information data structures to allow new generic attributes to be added, wherein the granule information data structures are agnostic of the clinical observations and new said granule information data structures inherit the base information data structures of the clinical information data structures from which the new granule information data structures are created or derived, thereby allowing new said generic attributes to be added to the new granule information data structures without altering an existing architecture of the flat file database.