Restructuring Hospital Information Systems Based on Service-Oriented Architecture

• Main Authors: Pei-ran Sun, 孫培然
• Other Authors: Fan Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/48111729996593909498

博士 === 國立中正大學 === 資訊管理所暨醫療資訊管理所 === 97 === As the scale of hospitals has been expanded, information systems including self-developed system, outsourcing system, and packaged software, need to be purchased or developed. However, there are numbers of isolated information islands, which generally stay resident in the facility and are not available timely on the enterprise network due to the lack of integration in early system establishment. For medical staff, it is time-consuming to accomplish a task by operating multiple systems, which might lead to mishaps and distraction, thereby endangering patients’ lives and safety. Therefore, system integration has become a critical issue on hospital computerization. The fact exists that diversified methods have been applied to construct HISs. It undoubtedly results in highly complicated structures, considerable difficulty in system integration, as well as huge maintenance costs. In order to provide a more flexible system framework, this study introduces a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). It is a loosely-coupled component model, which transforms the functional modules of legacy systems to service-oriented interfaces with ability to provide services externally. The interfaces are very well defined so that as they are linked together, they make possible for different platforms, operating systems and programming languages to intercommunicate and integrate in a coherent and universal way. This study is based on applying SOA to re-shape the Hospital Information System (HIS), and to adopt it step-by-step in order to reduce risks during the integration process. At first, the legacy HIS is re-evaluated by applying Jacobson and Lindstrom’s decision matrix theory to determine which systems need to be “Enhanced” and “Reengineered.” Then the legacy HIS is reconstructed with Adapter Service presented in the study as loosely coupled service interfaces. Finally, each interface is able to communicate to others through the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) of the SOA framework. Consequently, the proposed architecture based on SOA theory provides two case studies including implementations of the NHI IC Card Service and RFID integrated application for real practices. Accordingly, in terms of Adapting Service technology, a hospital can effectively reduce the number of connections among different interfaces, increase the system’s agility, and lower the maintenance cost. A hospital keeps its usual operation as the reengineering processes go on. By adding SOA on existing infrastructure would effectively accelerate delivery of information services to meet the business demands and protect IT investments. It is obvious that benefits of service-oriented architecture can be delivered today and in the future.