Migration aspects of telemedical software architectures

Many existing medical systems are good candidates for improvement via incremental migration. Incremental software improvement is, however, much more difficult if the system consists of independent functional modules built with different technologies. The goal of this paper is to present architecture migration aspects of contemporary telemedical systems. The paper discusses two approaches: the Software Architecture Analysis Method, and the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method in the context of migration of the medical teleconsultation system Konsul. The system, designed and implemented under KCT activity, is being successfully employed in day-to-day activities at the John Paul II Hospital in Krakow despite many existing drawbacks in its internal architecture. The paper presents the SAAM method of analysis of legacy systems. Two architectures are proposed as a result of this analysis - one based on the migration of the existing architecture, the other built according to the state-of-the-art Service Oriented Architecture. Konsul II, implementing the migration approach, has already been developed whereas Konsul III is in the design phase. The paper concludes with remarks about migration of telemedical systems.