Better CDR
Clinical Data Repository
Modern healthcare requires a single, accurate and accessible source of patient data.
This is what a clinical data repository (CDR) provides, a vendor-neutral, standardised and longitudinal record that brings together clinical information from across organisations and systems.
What is clinical data repository?
A clinical data repository is a centralised database that collects, stores and manages clinical information from multiple sources.
This is very different from a clinical data warehouse, which is designed primarily for retrospective analysis and reporting.
A CDR supports live care delivery as well as analytics.
Patient-centred: built around a complete longitudinal record for each patient.
Real-time: information is updated as care happens, so clinicians always work with the latest data.
Structured: uses international standards (such as openEHR)
Persistent: data is stored for long-term use, independent of applications.
Trusted by the world’s leading healthcare organisations
The Better Platform clinical data repository
The Better Platform CDR is a large-scale, high-performance, standards-based solution for storing, managing, querying and exchanging structured health data.
It is designed around openEHR specifications, ensuring:
- Data is stored in vendor-independent archetypes and templates.
- Standardised data entry and retrieval with terminology validation.
- Interoperability across care providers, care settings, and time.
What makes the Better CDR different?
Multidisciplinary and longitudinal patient records
- A single source of truth for each patient, integrating clinical and administrative data from across providers
Support for structured and unstructured data
- Structured: medications, vital signs, lab results, allergies, diagnoses.
- Unstructured: scanned notes, free-text narratives, medical images.
Powerful, vendor-independent querying
- Data is accessed with AQL (Archetype Query Language) queries
- AQL queries are portable across any openEHR-based CDR, unlike SQL queries tied to a specific database schema.
Secure, standards-based API access
- openEHR REST APIs for core EHR management, querying, composition and template management.
- FHIR APIs for operational and fast data exchange.
- Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) for fine-grained access rights
Built-in auditing and traceability
- Every action is logged, ensuring transparency and supporting certification requirements.
Event-driven architecture
- The CDR can notify subscribing systems of clinical events (e.g. new diagnoses, results, or care plan updates) in real time, enabling proactive care and automation.
Supporting collaboration and shared care
By enabling shared access to structured patient data, the Better Clinical Data Repository:
Simplifies care coordination across hospitals, community care and primary care
Reduces duplication of work, improving efficiency
Enables team-based, multidisciplinary approaches to patient care
The ODR and the CDR
Better together
ODR
Operational Data Repository
Demographic, operational, workflow, and administrative data.
CDR
Clinical Data Repository
Persistent, standardised clinical data.
Together they form a complete longitudinal patient record that separates who, where, and when from what happened clinically, ensuring privacy by design.
Benefits of a CDR for healthcare organisations
One source of truth Every care provider works from the same, up-to-date information.
Better patient outcomes Clinicians have a complete picture at the point of care.
Improved data quality Structured, validated data for research and analytics.
Cost-effective modernisation Integrate existing systems without starting from scratch.
Future-proof As new applications emerge, your data stays secure and usable.
Start building a vendor-neutral, openEHR-based clinical data repository with Better
