Healthcare information integration and shared platform based on service-oriented architectures

The central challenge facing the global healthcare marketplace today is the imperative to control costs and simultaneously improve quality of care. Increasingly healthcare organizations are recognizing that capturing more data and expanding access to that data in a secure environment are vital to meeting the twin goals of cost containment and quality improvement. This paper proposes an Healthcare information integration and shared platform based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The platform supports the integration, development, and operation of a full spectrum of healthcare applications. It couples a comprehensive, standards-based data repository with a robust set of integrated services for data normalization, customer-defined security and auditing, and business process/workflow. This powerful combination makes meaningful data consolidation, rapid application development, and genuine system interoperability possible. In addition, the platform helps healthcare organizations achieve these goals by providing a foundation for interoperability and integration of existing and new systems.