Enabling Key Data Sharing in Clinical Settings

Intel Corporation today announced IntelĀ® SOA Expressway for Healthcare, software that provides an efficient way to exchange healthcare information inside hospitals and with health information networks. The product will allow healthcare providers to more easily connect with one another so that each can provide better care while benefiting from reduced integration costs.

Until now, the sharing of patient information among healthcare network participants has been hindered by the steep costs and complexities of proprietary data and integration services. Based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Intel SOA Expressway for Healthcare offers a cost-efficient solution to this problem by providing an efficient and scaleable way to translate, process and connect any data format across a healthcare network.

In addition, Intel has created a group of validated independent software vendors (ISVs) that provides best-of-breed capabilities to deploy a complete health network powered by the Intel SOA Expressway. Current validated ecosystem vendors include Apelon, Infotech Global (IGI), Initiate Systems, Oracle and Red Hat. Services provided by these vendors include controlled medical vocabulary translation, clinical patient portal applications, enterprise master patient index, clinical data repository and operating system support. The validated ecosystem helps complete next-generation SOA architecture for healthcare data interoperability.

read more | digg story

Stepping up to improve health care

Engineering techniques can be used to eliminate inefficiencies in Canada’s health care system, as the work by a new Toronto research centre shows. In the modern race to innovate, the health care industry is lagging decades behind manufacturing and other service industries. Michael Carter is ready to launch a game of catch-up.

As head of the new Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering at the University of Toronto, Dr. Carter’s job seems simple on paper, but a lot tougher to execute: Replace the isolated elements of the system with a more efficient, productive health care system that gets everyone pulling in the same direction and makes the best use of limited resources.

“Every time I go into a hospital, I’m looking at it with a different eye,” Dr. Carter says. “Everywhere I look I see opportunities for improving efficiency. … It’s not just cutting costs. It’s really important to have the system set up properly.”

read more | digg story