On February 28, 2014, Open Health Tools (OHT) held a Board Meeting which aligned with HIMSS14, Orlando, FL. The meeting was held at the Orlando VA Medical Center. Mario G. Hyland (@interopguy), Senior Vice President and Founder of AEGIS.net, Inc. presented the concept and project charter of Advancing an Open Source Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Electronic Medical Ecosystem Project. Mr. Hyland has been an active member of the OHT and an industry leader in the testing of interoperability between Health Information Technology (HIT) systems and Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). The concept is to drive EHR advancement towards an Extensible Open Source Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Environment (Ecosystem) that will enable the development of loosely coupled integrated solutions (such as modernized workflow oriented systems). This will enable a wider community involvement by engaging open source vendors to support newer technology paradigms including Crowd Source development and support future Open Source Certification & Accreditation Programs. The OHT Board unanimously approved the charter.
However, there are numerous SOA challenges that will require a deep understanding of complex health workflow and dynamic business rules environment. This will require close working relationship with provider organization personnel, who while understanding the benefits derived from robust and resilient SOA implementations (open interface agreements) can support obtaining funding for this transformational technology. This technological advancement will benefit from leveraging another transformation testing infrastructure the AEGIS Developers Integration Lab (DIL).
OHT and AEGIS are actively trying to identify a pilot provider organization to participate in the project. Our strategy is to keep the project team small providing a low barrier to engage. Next steps for this group are to create a consortium of Collaborative and Contributing Partners and focus on developing a milestone based project plan. Our funding will entail various forms of grants, in-kind labor etc. to be realized during the course of the project lifecycle.
Benefits of this concept of Advancing an Open Source SOA Ecosystem include enabling:
• Operational and Maintenance efficiencies
• Open clinician work flow strategies
• Plug and Play Innovation
• Seamless Integration of applications
• Evolving data and security strategies
• Eco friendly solution – flexible and green
• Intelligent, robust business capabilities (rules)
• Support for concepts like Chaos factors (to ensure scalability).
Please consider joining this project and teaming with some outstanding leaders in the healthcare community. You may contact Barry Dickman (barry.dickman@aegis.net), Senior Consultant at AEGIS for information about this project.