 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
FYP Final Report v1.0.0
Copyright and All Rights Reserved To: Pee-Lo Team @2003/04
67
Though XML Web Services are designed for commercial use, it also does wonders in the telemedicine
field. A few telemedicine applications that are in use includes tele-radiology [6] – [8], tele-consultation [9],
tele-surgery [10], remote patient monitoring [11] - [13], and health care records management [14]. These
few telemedicine applications require their very own logics to work about. Some of them like tele-
radiology and tele-surgery may need a special kind of system. In this case, XML web services can be used
to enable information sharing among the different facilities within or outside of a health care center in the
most efficient way.
Certain health care institutions around America, Europe and Australasia have been using Health Level 7
(HL7) for intra-department communications. HL7 is a messaging protocol specifically developed to
exchange health/medical/patient information between information systems. HL7 messaging is widely used
with in Hospitals and Medical Organizations in the USA, Europe, and Australasia. The American National
Standards Institutes (ANSI) [15] endorses HL7 as a standard.
HL7 is useful for intra-department communication; which means servers in one department communicate
with another server at another department to obtain data, process it and show it on screen for the
physicians. HL7 is good enough for intra-department communication but not for anything more than that
and on that basis, XML web services comes in and patch the loophole.
All in all, most of the XML web services fall into following categories: intranet applications development,
exposure of current customer services, and preexisting Web applications. XML web services can be best
analogized as a thin layer of butter spread over a piece of bread (which refers to any existing system). By
doing so, it bring more functionality to the system.
Objective
The primary goal of using the XML web services are to enable the information sharing of health care
records between different health care institutions regardless of devices used to access them and its
geographical location. Using XML web services will also provides a round the clock availability of data
(in this case, the medical health record) and ease of accessing and updating them.
XML web services in telemedicine focus on making the medical health record accessible at all times to be
used by the underlying system. It is more of a way on how to share information rather than on building a
whole new system to incorporate all the existing system at hand. It is aimed at bringing an added
commercial value to the existing system.
Implementation
I.
Concept
How necessary and what benefits can this implementation brings to the world of telemedicine.
Telemedicine systems have already laid out a strong foundation in today’s society. There is no doubt on
the usefulness of these systems but what about on the interoperability between these systems? Can a tele-
surgery system in one hospital communicate with another system say the hospital’s patient record
management system if both of them are developed at different interval of time frame using two separate
technologies?
Consider this simple situation which happens in almost any corner of the world as an elaboration to answer,
to a certain extent, the questions above: Suppose Jack visits Hospital X for a medical check up and is
diagnosed of having a bad digestive disorder. He has to do a lot of follow-ups with the doctors in that
hospital for a few months until his health condition is at a more stable situation. He is then ‘discharged’
from having going to Hospital X for routine check up. Along the years, he switches jobs and he is not in
another part of the world (as in out of the geographical influence of Hospital X). Then his digestive
disorder strikes again after 10 years of ‘cool down’. The situation is a lot worse compared to the previous
one. He is admitted to the hospital (say Hospital Y) and the hospital has to phone to Hospital X to have his
medical records being faxed/emailed/transferred over, opens a new record for him at Hospital Y. If
 |
|
 |
|