Introduction

In healthcare, the outcome of a life-or-death decision can depend on the available information. To help deliver the right information at the right time and place, healthcare organizations traditionally have used HL7 interface engines to share data among clinical applications.

But the world of healthcare information technology is changing so rapidly thatHL7 interface engines are no longer sufficient. The technology landscape now includes new protocols and architectures, and the business environment has changed as well. Health information is being shared across broader populations of users and organizational boundaries. Clinical and administrative staffs need more information, faster, to improve patient care and control costs. And real-time analysis of information flowing through a hospital's applications is essential for improving care and the organization's financial health.

To meet these needs, a new class of advanced integration platform is replacing legacy HL7 interface engines and enabling the creation of connected healthcare environments. The best products in this class provide a range of capabilities for connected healthcare in a single, coherent package. They enable interoperability of systems from the emergency department to the billing department, from the chief medical officer to the office of the chief executive, and out through the healthcare community.

This white paper provides a guideline for selecting a modern integration platform to replace a legacy interface engine. Through a series of 9 key questions it will help you to clearly determine your selection criteria and the important architectural components to consider. This clarity is especially important when it comes to integration software. Far from being isolated applications whose strengths or weaknesses will have little effect on others, integration platforms will seamlessly connect applications, people, processes, and information across your organization. Asking these questions up front will help your organization identify the appropriate integration solution for its needs, save time and money, and reduce risk.

Introduction

With the growing popularity of smart phones and tablet computers, consumers are coming to expect that software solutions will be presented as "apps" on their mobile devices. The challenge for most application developers is to find ways to make their existing solutions run on modern mobile platforms without incurring the delay and cost of a complete rewrite.

This paper will describe the approach taken by HAPO Community Credit Union when they adapted their online banking application, developed on InterSystems' high performance object database system called Caché, for use with mobile devices. It serves to illustrate the principle that designing solutions "from the data outward" will allow developers to tailor their user interface to meet customer demands without major revision of the underlying business logic or data structures.