Abstract

•      The current paper presents several interoperability features applied to a local distributed
  information system, CardioNET, meant to improve quality of healthcare services, through the use
  of the latest medical and IT&C technologies. Modern healthcare systems require a patient-centric
  vision, where patients must receive medical attention or treatment anytime, regardless of their
  physical location. The eHealth distributed system we present – CardioNET is based on a SOA
  producer-consumer model taking a patient centric approach where every hardware, software and
  medical activities become “services”. The system offers tools for remote interactions between
  patients, doctors, medical entities (e.g. hospitals, labs) and authorities. Based on international
  standards (IDC10, LOINC, HL7), the system assures interoperability and data exchange in widely
  accepted XML formats. A logical domain bus, called Pervasive Health Service Bus-pHSB,
  exchanges HL7 compliant data messages between the integrated elements of the platform, through
  high level protocols (SOAP/HL7). The paper addresses interoperability problems between medical
  informational platforms proposing an eHealth architecture composed of: - production systems
  (nodes): General Practitioner, Analysis Laboratories, Clinics, Hospitals, Home Health Care Units
  (H-HCU);- portal with specialized web services, registries and shared data repositories – distributed,
  boundary-less environment for decision support, research and educational activities.
  Keywords: Hospital Information Systems; Knowledge bases; Information storage and retrieval;