Quite a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes which I feel 
you may be interested in. I will attempt to do a weekly digest of 
issues to keep everyone informed though hopefully a lot will be 
evident from the daily emails.

1. Board Meeting - a lively board meeting took place on the 23rd Sept 
and strong views were expressed taht if eth project is to be 
successful a tight management scheme will be needed. This message has 
gone centrally and I believe is being acted upon. As and when 
decisions are made I will relay them to the list.

2. Encryption issues - On Friday last 2/10/98 presentations were made 
by 2 potential suppliers of encryption tools. These took the form of 
demos  of the ability of both products to fit within a current 
Pathology/Middleware/GP system chain to transmit EDI messages in 
a secure encrypted manner. Both packages worked satisfactorily. Final 
selection will depend upon a detailed appraisal of relative benefits 
of eth two suppliers. The middleware team involved (Anglia) felt that 
the technical integration was not difficult. However I feel that 
other suppliers and particularly sites who write their own code may 
wish to discuss this with the Anglia team before the decision is 
finally taken. Can any questions / answers be  made on the list.

3. Encryption keys - The encryption methods will all require exchange 
of security keys between labs and GPs. The methods by which this will 
be done remains open but is subject to discussion and analysis. For 
those that do not understand eth Public/Private key mechanisms I am 
attempting to put a tutorial on the WWW site asap.

4. Acknowledgments of receipt of reports - This is a thorny issue 
which needs wide debate. EDI will allow confirmation of receipt and 
opening of mail (though not, as yet, appropriate cerebration about 
content.....) This doubles network traffic and will only be 
worthwhile is mechanisms are in place to deal with non-delivery etc. 
A broad debate is needed to bottom this one which will take place 
soon on this list - watch out for teh initiating messages outlining 
the problem.

5 Path Side Specification - Denis Bingham has completed and 
circulated teh outline for this specification.  Please feed comments 
back to him asap. I have three additional sections which need adding 
-
1. User interface - Is this to be DOS or Windows or unspecified?
2. Is there a preferred architecture / Operating System
3. Standards - we need a section which lists and details all 
standards which are to be adhered to.

In the audit section i would like to see a stronger indication of the 
exception reporting facilities (relevant to the acknowledgements 
issue above).

  
That should keep you all busy!!!

Best wishes

Rick



 


Dr Rick Jones
Director of Chemical Pathology and Immunology
Institute of Pathology
Tel:(44)-113-233-5677
Fax:(44)-113-233-5672
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/acb
http://www.ifcc.org


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