Integration of distributed healthcare information systems: application of CEN/TC251 ENV13606

Everyday, more and more, the healthcare sector requires the exchange of healthcare information between professionals from different disciplines and institutions. To support co-operative work among health professionals and institutions it is necessary to share healthcare information about patients in a meaningful way. But, nowadays, in most hospitals the heath data is distributed across several heterogeneous and autonomous information systems whose interconnection is difficult to achieve. Integration of such system may bring about many advantages such as consistent patient health records or interdepartmental workflows. In this paper, an overview of a computing system prototype, currently under development using CORBA and Java, is presented. It allows healthcare professionals to access patient information stored in heterogeneous autonomous information systems through a set of formal aggregates of health data based on the healthcare record architecture ENV13606 from CEN/TC251.