The health industry's broad scale and information-intensive nature make information technology (IT) in this area an important issue for the public and private sector alike. "E-Health" -- technology-enabled health care -- has the potential to improve health services delivery at all levels.
To see that potential fulfilled, Microsoft developed a guideline for e-Health software solutions called "The Connected Health Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint." A system implemented according to Microsoft's guidelines would employ a common architecture -- based on industry best practices and modern design techniques -- to link patients, citizens, health care professionals, application developers, independent software providers (ISVs), and government agencies.
The recommendations are based on a thorough analysis of what's required for e-Health transformation and on the technology designs that will meet those requirements in the most practical and effective manner. You can find more detail about the architecture in the Connected Health Framework Architecture and Design Blueprint white paper. You can also access the full documentation from the Microsoft Health IT Industry Center at www.microsoft.com/healthit .
A blueprint based on real-world needs and challenges
After studying the health industry at length through our work with customers, developers, and ISVs, Microsoft identified the top 10 issues any comprehensive e-Health system must deal with. They are:
- Creating health records
- Building life-long health histories for citizens from information stored in multiple diverse systems
- Managing identity and authorities
- Identifying patients and healthcare providers
- "Joining up" different systems on different platforms
- Interconnecting diverse systems so they are interoperable
- Communicating with remote systems
- Reusing legacy systems
- Achieving flexibility and agility
- Achieving performance and scalability
To meet these requirements, Microsoft's vision for knowledge-driven health incorporates three core capabilities:
Connected software systems that span applications, devices, services, and health care organizations to streamline processes and improve knowledge sharing and reduce costs.
Information-driven software that dramatically improves the way healthcare workers find, organize, and act on information.
Improved collaboration for health care workers and citizens through rich interfaces, including high-quality audio, video, and natural language.
A system built on these pillars is able to respond to the key challenges involving security, interoperability, privacy, and access to legacy systems. It also would engender trust among users, which is an intangible qualification required to draw a critical mass of information into a broad e-Health system.
Greater interconnectivity and integration through an open-standards approach
The architectural vision contained in the Connected Health Framework addresses two main subjects: seamless application integration and technical connectivity and interoperability. It provides generic and scenario-specific recommendations for the design, development, deployment, and operation of an e-Health system.
Fundamental to Microsoft's design vision is a reliance on Service-oriented architecture (SOA), a modular approach that reduces dependencies between systems and uses open standards and protocols to promote data and application interoperability. SOA responds to the need to achieve integration on two major levels -- application integration, in which systems and applications can talk to each other in mutually understandable terms, and technical interoperability, in which systems can be interconnected in a secure and reliable manner.
In a business context, SOA is a way of making enhanced business capabilities and information available to systems both inside and outside the enterprise by resolving issues of data consistency and business interoperability.
From a technical standpoint, SOA is a design paradigm aimed at enabling applications to operate across diverse technical and operational platforms. Technical interoperability is based on the observance of detailed international standards and protocols, particularly those of Web services.
Recognizing the need for agility in an environment of adaptive healthcare solutions, Microsoft's Connected Health Framework separates the more volatile user and business processes from the more stable business and data services. A Connected Health Service Hub is the architectural component that provides a crucial link between these volatile and stable worlds.
The Connected Health Service Hub implements a set of services that are available to a variety of clients.
The hub is the logical common infrastructure shared by multiple providers of e-Health services. It implements a set of services that are available to a variety of clients, and in turns acts as a client itself, calling on other external systems for services.
All client interaction is through published interfaces based on industry standards for Web services. This provides the necessary openness, compatibility with a wide range of commercial products, and cross-platform interoperability.
