<< start of forwarded material >>
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 01:26:01 +0100
To: [log in to unmask]
From: Gerard Freriks <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The Web and EMR
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:
At 22:57 +0000 on 06-10-1996, Ahmad Risk wrote:
> This is copied from the MIT MedWeb site. Hopefully, one day the UK
> will wake up!!
>
> "The Multi-Institutional Demonstration Database
>
> This demonstration is still under construction, but will be
> available soon. It provides uniform access to heterogeneous legacy
> databases. We have databases of sample anonymized patient records
> from three institutions (Children's Hospital, Beth Israel Hospital,
> and Massachusetts General Hospital, all members of the Boston EMR
> Collaborative). There is an institutional server for each database,
> that converts the information in the database into a ``common medical
> record'' encoded in the HL7 message format. The web server queries
> each of the institutional servers, pieces together an "overall"
> patient record, and converts the resulting information into html."
>
Correct.
This was proven 1-2 years ago.
It is possible.
HTML will present it on the screen, the WEB will make things possible,
platform independently, etc, etc. Therefore it was designed.
But that's it.
The legacy systems will stay legacy systems.
All the information there will have the problem of conversion with change
of software versions or database-model. The longterm archiving of huge
amounts of data is impossible using electronics the way we are using it now.
They won't change the way we must think about medical Fuzzy-data instead of
100%-true -data.
Radical, drastic changes are called for if, we want better systems.
New paradigms.
And untill then...
Legacy, the WEB, HTML are fine. Inevitably it will lead to systems based on
the HTML super-set: SGML.
And all the information (data+meaning) will be put together in a document.
A SGML document to be processed by any browser on any platform.
Instead of hardcoding into the databse software the meaning and storing in
a separate place the data.
greetings
<< end of forwarded material >>
Gerard Freriks,huisarts, MD
C. Sterrenburgstr 54
3151JG Hoek van Holland
the Netherlands (31) 174-384296/ Fax: -386249
ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|