An architecture for hospital information integration

The ongoing integration of hospital information systems (HIS) continues. Data storage systems, data networks and computers improve, data bases grow and health-care applications increase. Some computer operating systems continue to evolve and some fade. Health care delivery now depends on this computer-assisted environment. The result is the critical harmonization of the various hospital information systems becomes increasingly difficult. The purpose of this paper is to present an architecture for HIS integration that is computer-language-neutral and computer-hardware-neutral for the informatics applications. The proposed architecture builds upon the work done at the University of Arizona on middleware,(1-3) the work of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), and the American College of Radiology (ACR). It is a fresh approach to allowing applications engineers to access medical data easily and thus concentrates on the application techniques in which they are expert without struggling with medical information syntaxes. The HIS can be modeled using a hierarchy of information sub-systems thus facilitating its understanding. The architecture includes the resulting information model along with a strict but intuitive Application Programming Interface (API), managed by CORBA. The CORBA requirement facilitates interoperability. It should also reduce software and hardware development times.