title: An integrated healthcare information system for end-to-end standardized exchange and homogeneous management of digital ECG formats.
abstract: This paper investigates the application of the enterprise information system (EIS) paradigm to standardized cardiovascular condition monitoring. There are many specifications in cardiology, particularly in the ECG standardization arena. The existence of ECG formats, however, does not guarantee the implementation of homogeneous, standardized solutions for ECG management. In fact, hospital management services need to cope with various ECG formats and, moreover, several different visualization applications. This heterogeneity hampers the normalization of integrated, standardized healthcare information systems, hence the need for finding an appropriate combination of ECG formats and a suitable EIS-based software architecture that enables standardized exchange and homogeneous management of ECG formats. Determining such a combination is one objective of this paper. The second aim is to design and develop the integrated healthcare information system that satisfies the requirements posed by the previous determination. The ECG formats selected include ISO/IEEE11073, Standard Communications Protocol for Computer-Assisted Electrocardiography, and an ECG ontology. The EIS-enabling techniques and technologies selected include web services, simple object access protocol, extensible markup language, or business process execution language. Such a selection ensures the standardized exchange of ECGs within, or across, healthcare information systems while providing modularity and accessibility.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronics Engineering and Communications, Aragón Institute of Engineering Research, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain. jtrigo@unizar.es
authors.forename: Jesús Daniel
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Trigo
authors.forename: Ignacio
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Martínez
authors.forename: Alvaro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alesanco
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kollmann
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Escayola
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hayn
authors.forename: Günter
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schreier
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: García
mesh_terms: D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D019033:Delivery of Health Care, Integrated; D004562:Electrocardiography; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D006801:Humans; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D014584:User-Computer Interface