The CTR went live in 1999, but underwent a significant restructuring in 2004 to increase usability and data quality and to facilitate data output. The CTR has evolved from a single user client server system to a N-Tier Web Based system that allows for concurrent users. All user interactions are done via a user-friendly browser based graphical interface.

The CTR receives core files from the institutions into a buffering table and an email driven automation process facilitates the loading of submitted files into the database. The records reside in the buffering table until business rules are run.

Having the business rules at the database tier ensures data consistency. Approximately 140 business rules ensure a high level of data quality. Of these, 38 have been created to allow for accurate recipient information and merging. The CTR has created a recipient matching view to accurately match patients from other data sources to patients in the CTR. The view uses last name, first name, middle name, birth date and other identifier fields and matches using all the fields ever submitted to the CTR for a specific recipient and creates every possible combination of those fields for each recipient.

The original CTR method of having production reports created from database tables has evolved to having production reports and adhoc queries being created from a data warehouse. Fields in the data warehouse aggregate divided units into whole units to enable reporting of either metric.

Recently, CTR reports have been published into Crystal Enterprise to enable PBCO team members to access their data in a more efficient method. Over 100 production reports have been created to enable easy access to the data.