Use of international data communications standards in hospital laboratories

The National Health Service is committed to the use of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) data communications standards. In this paper we describe a project aimed at demonstrating the use of OSI standards in practice. The Pathology Laboratory at Northampton General Hospital is involved in this major project to link its laboratory computer systems with hospital and GP computer systems. The data will be transferred using X.400 messaging standards over an X.25 Wide Area Network. Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) will be used to encode data being exchanged between laboratory, hospital and GP computer applications.