Patent ID: 8615412

Claim:
A method for managing distributed medical data, comprising the steps of: providing a plurality of software brokers in communication with a plurality of patient medical files in a medical information system, each respective software broker generating metadata files for locally stored patient medical files; and each said software broker performing the steps of: identifying, periodically on a programmed basis, patient medical files each containing digital medical data relating to a patient; creating, for each of the identified patient medical files, a metadata file containing attributes relating to the contents of the identified patient medical file and the storage location of the identified patient medical file, wherein creating said metadata file comprises parsing each of the identified patient medical files to extract said attributes relating to the contents and storage location of the identified patient medical file, standardizing a meaning and format of the attributes whereby the same attributes represent data having the same meaning and format across different medical information systems, and storing the standardized attributes in the metadata file; packaging each of the metadata files for transmission to a remote central computer; and transmitting, in a secure manner, each of the metadata files to the remote central computer.