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FYP Final Report v1.0.0
Copyright and All Rights Reserved To: Pee-Lo Team @2003/04
69
Location independent is achieved due to that XML web services are an Internet application and Internet
does not take into account the transmission mediums used to link it up. That basically means a physician
can access his patient’s medical health record even in the most isolated part of the world for as long as
there is a mean to connect to the Internet.
Adaptability and Flexibility
XML web services, as aforementioned, are hardware and software independent. This gives it the flexibility
to be built upon any underlying and currently functioning system. The whole concept behind using this is
to not change the system but rather on upgrading the system. The work of upgrading usually brings to
mind of, perhaps, writing some old logics to adapt to the new ones and in doing so, it triggers a series of
inconsistencies or such that will hinder the stability of the whole system.
The implementation of XML web services, on the other hand, is more of adding an independent layer of
processing logic over the existing business logic of the existing system. This approach might sounds like
‘adding salt to the wound’ as if based on technology as we know it, the new technology sometimes will
have a hard time binding to the old ones. However, this complication has been identified very early in the
developed of XML web services and it has been resolved.
A new system built from scratch can have XML web services integrated into the system. Any systems built
using Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Microsoft .NET Framework (.NET) will have no problem in
including the XML web services into it as depicted in Fig. 2.
If there is an existing system, then a XML web services module can be added to the system on the top of
the business logic layer and have it programmed to parse the data to the underlying business logic for
processing if the client devices queries for the information as shown in Fig. 3. The system response to the
request by passing the result from the business logics to the XML web services module and let the
converting algorithms in the module does the translation for the transmission to the requesting devices.
There is no reinventing the wheel processes involved in both the newly built system with XML web
services built-in and that which have XML web services module added into it. Since XML web services is
a standard generally agreed by the decision makers in the field of information technology, it is has the like
of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); developers of the module will only busy themselves with
formatting the output of the results to suit the calling devices and not working on converting the forms of
the output from one output format to another.
Discussion/Conclusion
XML web services will be the driving vehicle to the next step in this information technology era.
Undeniably XML web services are built for the interest of expanding the influences of businesses but in the
field of telemedicine, it is just as influential and critical. Its simple implementation puts the developers at
ease in terms of efforts spent on developing a module/system and with that comes the ‘quicker time to
market’ factor. Along the way, it reduces the testing phase and as well as the maintenance cost in keeping
the services running at optimal status.
XML web services do not ends here. It has its own share of commercial benefits to the telemedicine field.
Since XML is behind the web service and XML is a mean of bringing the meaning to data, multiple of front
end customer services can be built on top of this XML web services. An additional front end service
system can be designed to service the need of patients at a minimal service charge. Example: a patient can
make and check his appointment with his doctors through the Internet, set a notification SMS through cell
phones to notify the patient when to take what medication and much more. All these services can be seen
as additional upgrades to a system and has no way interfering with the aforementioned proposed design
stated in this paper.
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