August 24-25, 2006, Cologne, Germany
| International HL7 Interoperability Conference IHIC 2006
August 24-25, 2006, Cologne, Germany |
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To the IHIC 2006 conference program committee
Email: dmlopez@det.uvigo.es
Diego M. López
eHealth Competence Center, University of Regensburg Medical Center, Germany
Franz-Josef-Strauss-Allee 11. D-93053, Regensburg, Germany.
Phone: +49 941 944-6767
Fax: +49 941 944-6079
dmlopez@det.uvigo.es
PD. Dr. Bernd Blobel
eHealth Competence Center, University of Regensburg Medical Center, Germany
Diego M. López. Msc, PhD (c)
He is a Telecommunications Engineer and Master on Engineering from the University of Cauca in Colombia, and PhD Candidate from the University of Regnesburg and University of Vigo. He is associate professor at the University of Cauca. He is researcher at the Group on Telematics Engineering and the EHAS-Colombia subprogram in Colombia and the eHealth Competence Center Regensburg. He was the representative of the University of Cauca in the CYTED Iberoamerican Network in Telemedicine and Health Informatics. He has been involved in several e-health projects funded by international organizations, Colciencias and the Local Health Authority in Cauca. His areas of interest include the health information systems analysis and design, interoperability, HIS architectures and Telemedicine and Public health information systems.
Bernd Blobel, PD Dr.
Dr Bernd Blobel is head of the eHealth Compentence Center Regensburg in Germany.
He works as chair, task or taskforce leader, advisor, or contributor internationally at ISO TC 215, CEN TC 251, HL7, OMG/CORBA, WITFOR, as well as nationally in Germany (e.g., at GMDS, GDD, and DIN). Bernd Blobel chairs the EFMI WG “Electronic Health Records”, is re-founding chair of the EFMI WG “Data Security, Safety and Quality”, and German representative in IMIA WG4 “Security in Health Information Systems”. He was chairing the CEN/ISSS eHealth Standardisation Focus Group and became recently an International Associate of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), which supports the project’s mission beyond Europe.
He was involved in many projects funded by the European Union within its Framework Programs, e.g., HANSA, ISHTAR, TrustHealth-1 and TrustHealth-2, DIABCARD-3, EUROMED-ETS, MEDSEC, EHCR-SupA, HARP, and RESHEN.
Bernd Blobel’s special research domains are design and implementation of open health information systems, system integration and middleware, electronic medical records, and data security. Dr Bernd Blobel is author/editor of 14 scientific books and author / co-author of more than 290 scientific papers, posters, and abstracts.
The role of HL7 in the Development of Integrated National Health Information Systems in Developing Countries
research
long (45 minutes)
Health systems in developing countries face the urgent challenge to improve the efficiency of health services.
The design of the future-proof interoperable, scalable, flexible and secure information systems is only possible by approaching the advanced state-of-the art in health information systems and software engineering. In the paper is illustrated how the HDF is evolving to a unified process able to support the analysis, design and implementation of
national information systems. HDF provides the knowledge, reference models, vocabularies, data types, etc. required to realize semantically interoperable health systems.
The role of HL7 in the Development of Integrated National Health Information Systems in Developing Countries
Introduction. Health systems in developing countries face the urgent challenge to improve the efficiency of health services, mainly because of lack of infrastructure and resources. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is an answer to this need. In Colombia, especially after a health reform, a need for an integrated health information system (IHIS) was recognized, but in spite isolated experiences, that system has not been yet accomplished. In a recent report from the Ministry of Health, the evaluation of existent health information systems was performed. A need for integration of isolated systems, standardization and normalization of health records and the design of scalable, flexible and secure information systems was identified [1]. The design of the future IHIS is only possible by approaching the advanced state-of-the art in health information systems and software engineering. The HL7 Development Framework (HDF) provides a unified process and some tooling to realize such a challenge.
Materials and Methods. To approach the aforementioned integrated system a unified process, able to realize semantic interoperable HIS, needs to be defined. The unified process is a fully iterative process covering the entire lifecycle of a system from analysis over development up to implementation and deployment. It supports the composition/decomposition of components, uses a unified representation language, is flexible and configurable, and supports reusability. Semantic interoperability is concerned with the use of explicit semantic descriptions to facilitate information and systems integration. For realizing semantic interoperability basic requirements need to be met: 1) all different aspects of the systems are defined as a composition/decomposition of components starting from basic concepts or building blocks 2) all models are derived from reference models 3) vocabulary is maintained using agreed terminologies and ontologies and 4) conformance statements are defined [3].
Results. HDF is evolving to a unified process for the design of HIS services, not only messages. HDF integrates HL7 basic concepts, reference information models, vocabulary, methodology and some tooling to approach the challenge of semantic interoperable national information systems in developing countries.
· The EHR Functional Model provides the common concepts defining the basic services/functions.
· RIM, D-MIM and R-MIMs, are reference information models that can be specialized according to the health information system requisites. Constraints and composition rules are clearly defined (attributes, data types, associations and cardinalities).
· HL7 also provides a rich vocabulary to define the concepts involved in several healthcare settings.
The proposed HDF-based framework is described according to the unified process six core workflows: Business Modeling, Requirements, Analysis and Design, Implementation; Test, and Deployment. Domain-specific requirements can be consistently described using the EHR functionalities, then the information models are derived from D-MIMs and R-MIM, CMETs and HDMs and finally the resulting models can be transformed in architectural components by adding operations to the classes and by defining interfaces to access to the services provided by the components.
Discussion. The paper illustrates how the HDF and HL7 reference models can be used in the specification of the public health surveillance System in Colombia (SIVIGILA) [2]. The specification stage is described according to the Business Modeling workflow through some artifacts:
· The Business Use Cases. A set of functions for the SIVIGILA system identified from the EHR Functional Model.
· Dynamic Domain Model. Activity Diagrams provide a detailed view of the business process modeling the detailed logic of the business process and its rules.
· Static Domain Model. A Class Diagram representing the main concepts involved in the domain. The Class Diagram specializes (clone) the HL7 Reference Models (D-MIMs, R-MIMs and CMETS). The HL7 tooling set (R-MIM Designer) is used to support this task.
· Glossary. The glossary is obtained from the HL7 Vocabulary based on the specialized HL7 Information model. The HL7 v3 standard documentation provides a navigable HTML documentation hyper-linked to the graphic representation of the HL7 models.
Conclusions. HDF is considered a unified process able to be used for analysis, design and implementation of national information systems. It provides knowledge, reference models, vocabularies, data types, etc. required to realize semantically interoperable health systems.
References.
[1] Ministerio de la protección social, proyecto sistema integral de información. Sistema integral de información de la protección social. SIIS. Modelo conceptual. Bogotá (Colombia): Ministerio de la protección social; 2003.
[2] Martinez A, Lopez DM, Saez A, Seoane J, Rendon A, Shoemaker R, Fernandez I. Improving epidemiologic surveillance and health promoter training in rural Latin America through information and communication technologies Telemed J E Health. 2005 Aug;11(4):468-76.