Moreover, Baylor Health took two months to build new interfaces and set up the data formatting with existing registration systems at each hospital, he said.

Forrester Research Inc. analyst Eric Brown said that Baylor Health is among a handful of early users of integration tools to index patient records. "What Baylor is trying to do is central to a transformation in health care overall," he said. "The thrust in health care right now is to create the 360-degree view of the patient."

But just as commercial companies have gone through the pain of trying to link customer and supply chain data, organizations implementing this type of project face myriad challenges, he added.

For example, the health care industry is made up of a variety of entities running a wide range of systems and using many different means of identifying patients, Brown said.

"Unlike screwing up a direct mail campaign or a manufacturing order," he noted, "combining two people's medical records has potentially life-threatening implications."