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HL7 with CORBA and OLE: software components for healthcare
Summary
Componentized software, using Health Level Seven (HL7) extensions with OLE and CORBA, enables seamless integration of diverse healthcare systems. This approach facilitates data exchange across multiple vendor platforms, improving interoperability.
Area of Science:
- Health Informatics
- Software Engineering
- Computer Science
Background:
- Componentized software offers improved integration of disparate systems.
- Health Level Seven (HL7) is developing extensions for healthcare information exchange.
- Technologies like Microsoft OLE and CORBA are being explored for this integration.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the development of HL7 extensions using OLE and CORBA for healthcare information exchange.
- To demonstrate the feasibility of integrating multiple vendor systems using these technologies.
- To outline the specifications for the first release of this standard.
Main Methods:
- Designing HL7 protocol extensions compatible with Microsoft OLE and CORBA.
- Performing extensive prototyping, including interconnecting sixteen different vendor systems.
- Ensuring specifications are isomorphic and based on HL7 version 2.3 for broad implementation.
Main Results:
- Successful simultaneous interconnection of sixteen diverse vendor systems.
- Exchange of demographic data and laboratory results was demonstrated.
- Specifications for OLE and CORBA extensions are isomorphic and based on HL7 version 2.3.
Conclusions:
- The developed HL7 extensions facilitate fine-grained integration of healthcare software systems.
- The approach allows for easy implementation in non-object-oriented systems.
- Future HL7 version 3 development will also leverage object-oriented models for CORBA and OLE sharing.