Managing Environments for Healthcare Information Systems Using Enterprise Application Integration

Systems integration (SI) in healthcare uses an enterprise application integration (EAI) or middleware layer to allow disjoint systems on various platforms to exchange information. Health Level 7 (HL7) is the communication exchange standard used in healthcare for this purpose. The message structure and usage of HL7 is standardized but the implementation of HL7 is widely customized to fit specific system, application, and site. Therefore, EAI is used to accomplish seamless integration by transforming and filtering messages, translating and mapping coded values, and distributing and gathering messages to and from different systems. Within healthcare IT, the number of integrated information systems (IS) has been increasing and multiple environments are being set up to support different types of testing, such as regression testing, upgrade testing, compliance testing, etc. The ability to support multiple independent test cycles simultaneously is critical to patient care because each integration testing is designed to replicate real scenarios and mitigate any changes that can potentially be introduced to a live environment. The role of a systems integrator has evolved from primarily developing interfaces to also managing interfaces in multiple environments. This paper introduces a more efficient way of managing various test environments in SI using an EAI.