HC2008: integration made Simpl
NHS IT managers and vendors will be in Harrogate next week for Healthcare Computing 2008. One of the Microsoft partners at the show will be Simpl - a company that is working on health and integration solutions with Microsoft Corporation that has also won a key contract from NHS Wales.
Microsoft partner Simpl will be helping to run a live demonstration of linked-up primary and acute care systems at next week’s Healthcare Computing event in Harrogate.
The New Zealand company, whose UK division specialises in healthcare, will be running the repository behind the BCS/IHE UK Interoperability Demonstration of Clinical Document Sharing.
“Six vendors will have live versions of their systems up and running to show how a patient and their health information can move between, say, their GP and a hospital and back for follow-up care,” says Mark Simmons, Simpl UK health practice lead. "Simpl has been working since 2005 with specialised teams at Microsoft Corporation in the United States on health and integration solutions."
“In the background, there will be a number of systems making it all work, and one of them will be the repository we have developed with Microsoft. It will hold information, such as test results, that GPs and hospital clinicians need to access to organise and deliver treatment and so on.”
Simpl has been working since 2005 with specialised teams at Microsoft Corporation in the United States on health and integration solutions. Its first project was the creation of the Health Connection Engine.
This is a standards-based set of web services that enables health organisations to quickly deploy solutions to improve systems interoperability and clinical collaboration that is available from Microsoft’s CodePlex site.
The second project was the creation of the repository and a complementary document registry, which comply with the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) XDS-b (Cross Enterprise Document Sharing-b) integration profile.
“IHE is a kind of standards body – it exists to advance the state of system integration in healthcare,” explains Mr Simmons. “It says ‘there is this problem to be solved’ and ‘this standard should be used in solving it’ or ‘this is what a solution should look like.’
“That information can be used in three ways: to create components, like the repository; to guide developers working with different programming languages and development platforms; and as a reference for healthcare organisations during a tender process to ensure they define appropriate integration requirements.”
“Healthcare Computing is providing a showcase for the work we have been doing in this area with Simpl, which shows that we are involved at a much more granular level than people often realise,” adds Hazem Abolrous, Microsoft product planner for IHE XDS-b.
Simpl UK is also working with NHS Wales on the Welsh Clinical Portal project. Its aim is to allow healthcare staff to log onto a desktop at any hospital in Wales and review records and test results held in a wide range of systems.
Mr Simmons says the portal should improve efficiency and patient safety, because clinicians will have all the information they need to hand, in a form that they will soon find familiar.
It should also reduce training and IT costs for Welsh trusts, since they will be able to replace their “back end” systems without changing the “front end” that staff have become used to.
Simpl UK won a competitive tender to scope and design the application integration strategy for the portal and started the initial phase in January 2008.
Further Reading
- Find out more about Simpl
- More information about HC2008 can be found at the Healthcare Computing website
Find out more about the other vendors involved in the document sharing showcase:
- IBM
- Initiate Systems
- Agfa Healthcare
- Tiani-Spirit
- Forcare
The Health Connection Engine can be found on the Microsoft CodePlex site. The IHE XDS.b Repository and Registry components included in the demonstration at Harrogate can also be found on the Microsoft CodePlex site. Find out more