title: Integration of medical applications: the 'mediator service' of the SynEx platform.
abstract: Interoperability is a key issue and a long-term domain of research for distributed healthcare information systems. The SynEx European project provides open and standard integration platform for both new and legacy medical applications. It aims to provide access to hospital information services, patient records, and to medical knowledge, in a seamless way, hiding the distribution aspects and the heterogeneity of the underlying systems. In this study, we describe the SynEx 'mediator service', a software engineering component, that is used to facilitate the development of mediators between any pair of SynEx components and to manage the corresponding interchange messages. Both a C++ library and a Java package of a generic mediator model are provided with several ready-to-use specialisations for well-defined use. The use of the XML technology as a powerful data interchange format and as an efficient data structure converter is proposed and discussed.
authors.affiliation: Medical Informatics Department, Broussais University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Broussais Hotel Dieu, 15 Rue de l'Ecole de Medicine, 75270 Paris Cedex 06, France. xu@hegp.bhdc.jussieu.fr
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sauquet
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zapletal
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lemaitre
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Degoulet
mesh_terms: D003195:Computer Communication Networks; D003628:Database Management Systems; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D016490:Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D012985:Software Design