 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
FYP Final Report v1.0.0
Copyright and All Rights Reserved To: Pee-Lo Team @2003/04
13
dedicate himself to selecting Lego block from one of the two companies and not both since their
dimension defers and they cannot work together.
So let’s imagine Hospital X is using Oracle DBMS to store its data and Hospital Y is using SQL
Server 2000. The way data is represented in these two DBMS are totally different. Security issues
aside, Hospital Y will face complications when they wish to obtain data via Internet from Hospital X
simply because it requires a different programmatic approach to retrieve the data out from Hospital
X’s database. The same is true for Hospital X trying to access data from Hospital Y.
Now the example above just involves two hospitals. A good planning can solve this problem but
what happens if there are more than two hospitals involved in this and each of them are using a
different DBMS approach? Imagine the time and effort needs to be spent on retrieving data from
any of these DBMS, not to mention even update them.
In order to solve this problem and make the data widely available throughout the world, we need to
come out with a uniform way; a standard to retrieving data out from any DBMS disregarding how
data is being represented in these DBMS. We need to somehow make sure that updating these
databases is as easy as retrieving them so that a person who is not technically skilled in IT can do
it.
2.2.2 Availability of Data
Computer systems nowadays are usually networked together to harness it’s processing and
availability power. In huge enterprise situation, companies under the same umbrella of influence
will expand their system’s availability to all its branches worldwide in a Wide Area Network (WAN).
The employees within the company can share data and use these data without any single idea of
where the data is stored. A portion of the data could be stored in a server at Site A while the
second portion of it in Site B. What the employees feel is that it seems like the data comes from
one single place or site. That is availability of data. The data is available to all the employees in
that company who is connected to the WAN.
In health care, this kind of implementation is not widely (if not at all) being implemented. Local
Area Network might be common but WAN is still giants leaps away from reality. Even if LAN
exists, it is greatly under utilized in Malaysia.
Implementation of WAN with a universal data representation through the usage of XML can greatly
make the data, particularly data of the patients, available to all the health care institution branches.
Physicians and even the patients do not have to manually ask for a transfer of information from a
branch to another. Everything is computerized and with a search through the enterprise database,
everything is available.
Even if the patient is in Site A but his information is stored in Site B and another portion of it is
stored in Site C when he visited Site C, the physician who is attending this patient can just make a
database search and all these data will appear on screen for the physician. Data is available
without exposing any deep technical expects of how things work.
 |
|
 |
|