Connected Standards Supporting Connected Care
Within the health industry, there is no shortage of standards work or of potential technical solutions that are able to add value to this complex and persistently disconnected vertical market sector. What has been lacking, however, is a cohesive view and integrative set of complementary functions designed to work with existing systems to effectively bridge across incumbent systems and solutions in support of connected-health and care continuity.
The suite of OMG healthcare standards were developed in concert with Health Level Seven (HL7), and provide a superstructure allowing for peaceful co-existence of yesterday’s integration strategies while aligning with current industry best-practices, drawing from other vertical market solutions and proven technical approaches. Based upon model-driven architecture, this suite of standards comfortably supports concurrent use of many different interface protocols into a cohesive platform, providing a foundation to extend current systems beyond institutional boundaries using an open, standards-based infrastructure.
Why use standards in the healthcare technology:
- Get the ability to extend current EHR solutions to effectively address gaps between institutions.
- Establish and promote consistency within an institution across multiple applications (such as shared Clinical Decision Support or Terminology Services).
- Provide an underpinning platform to allow for adoption of new capabilities or innovation, provided by enabling a shared services bus.
- Allow for an integrative approach bringing together existing and emerging data sharing protocols.
- Provide the basis for a service-enabled e-health infrastructure.
Healthcare and Business Process Modeling
Most healthcare systems depend on diagrams and flow charts to document how clinical procedures should happen. These pathways, limited in details, are often stored in binders or saved in desktop computers. Applying OMG process modeling standards creates a blueprint for shareable pathways across clinical institutions, thereby reducing clinical steps to simple computerized orders. The “Field Guide to Shareable Clinical Pathways” focuses on three OMG business process standards to represent clinical pathways that define distinct aspects of care workflow and decision-making: Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN) and Decision Model and Notation (DMN).
Business Process Model and Notation™
Business Process Model and Notation has become the de-facto standard for business processes diagrams. It is intended to be used directly by the stakeholders who design, manage and realize business processes, but at the same time be precise enough to allow BPMN diagrams to be translated into software process components. BPMN has an easy-to-use flowchart-like notation that’s independent of any particular implementation environment.
Case Management Model and Notation™
CMMN is a graphical notation used for capturing work methods that are based on the handling of cases requiring various activities that may be performed in an unpredictable order in response to evolving situations. Using an event-centered approach and the concept of a case file, CMMN expands the boundaries of what can be modeled with BPMN, including less structured work efforts and those driven by knowledge workers. Using a combination of BPMN and CMMN allows users to cover a much broader spectrum of work methods.
Decision Model and Notation™
DMN is a modeling language and notation for the precise specification of business decisions and business rules. DMN is easily readable by the different types of people involved in decision management. These include: business people who specify the rules and monitor their application; business analysts.
Services Directory™
The Services Directory (ServD) specification provides an SOA model to support the discovery of, and access to, service provider, individual, and organizational information including; locations, associations, contact details, services, identifiers, and many other relevant characteristics/attributes. This information can be relevant for use by both people and/or computers. Actors are able to use this information to support secure transfer of personal and confidential information to network end point applications or shared repositories. This specification has been developed to meet the needs of interoperability in healthcare and community services.
Clinical Decision Support Service™
Clinical Decision Support Service™ (CDSS™) allows for access to industry best-practices and institutional or licensed knowledge to conduct patient-specific assessment and provide recommendations to clinicians on best-practice or suggested protocols. A Decision Support Service takes in patient data as the input and provides back patient-specific assessments and recommendations.
Common Terminology Services 2™
The Common Terminology Service Version 2 is a functional standard defining the capabilities, responsibilities, inputs, outputs, and expected behavior defining a set of core functionality to support the management, maintenance, and interaction with ontologies and medical vocabulary systems. CTS 2 provides a consensus API that can be integrated on top of existing terminology systems, allowing disparate terminology systems to interoperate via CTS 2 interfaces while maintaining and fulfilling their local, often specific, terminology functional requirements.
Archetype Modeling Language™
Archetype Modeling Language™ (AML™) defines a standard means for modeling Archetype Models (AMs) to support the representation of Clinical Information Modeling Initiative (CIMI) artifacts using modeling profiles as defined in the UML. Archetype Models are Platform Independent Models (PIMs) and are developed as a set of constraints on a specific Reference Model (RM).