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Fiorano ITK Framework
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The Fiorano Healthcare Framework is the backbone for integrating new and
old systems within the healthcare environment. Built on the proven
speed, scalability, and reliability of
Fiorano's Enterprise Service Bus
(ESB), the framework is compatible with the NHS Interoperability Toolkit
(ITK).
Fiorano ITK V2.0 Accreditation
The Interoperability Toolkit is an NHS Technology Office initiative aimed at accelerating the National Program for IT with its move from a "replace all" to a "connect all" approach. The ITK is the conduit for this change.
"The ITK consists of the
development and delivery of a set of technical standards and frameworks
for interoperability, covering transactional and analytical
services."
[http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/interop/background]
The Healthcare Framework consists of:
- The Fiorano ITK Middleware for interconnection of ITK compliant systems.
- Fiorano ITK Adapters to integrate legacy and existing systems.
- Capabilities for complex event processing, analytical services and discrete health applications to help remove duplication of functionality commonly found across multiple systems related to discharge summary reporting, patient tracking, patient registry and so on.
The adaptability and scalability of the Fiorano Healthcare Framework makes it suitable for integrating a wide range of systems both small and big. These include systems located-within a GP practice, within a hospital as well as connecting many practices and hospitals together over a wide area.
Fiorano ITK Middleware
This is middleware that is a fully compliant ITK broker that can route
or broadcast HL7 and CDA messages (as well as PDFs, diagnostic images
and so on) in a simple but highly configurable manner. Integrating a new
ITK compliant system into an existing environment with the Fiorano
Healthcare Framework can be achieved in minutes.
Fiorano ITK Adapters
Since the Fiorano Healthcare Framework is built on the Fiorano ESB,
integrating existing non-ITK compliant systems is simple due to the
plethora of Aapters that come pre-built within Fiorano ESB - the visual
design tool makes this easy for an in-house IT team, but should a bit of
help be required then Fiorano's 24/7 technical team are always at hand.
Fiorano ITK Capabilities
While integration can improve communication within and between
healthcare organizations, Fiorano understands that patient care is
maximised by taking a holistic view of the treatment they receive and
have, therefore, introduced the concept of "Capabilities" to
extend the healthcare solution. For example, an organization's
effectiveness is measured by reporting the through-put and waiting-times
across departments. With the Fiorano Healthcare Framework and the
Complex Event Processing functionality within Fiorano ESB, it is
possible to add capabilities to construct reports from analysis of
messages as they pass through. Over time, as more services are added to
the ITK specification, this enables complex reporting and analysis of a
patient's treatment throughout an organization. This assists in
answering questions such as: "How long did the A&E patient have
to wait between being admitted and receiving pain relief for their
broken wrist?"
The depth of the information analyzed by the framework grows linearly with the growth of the ITK message vocabulary. Easily configurable Fiorano flows analyzes information thus allowing the creation of a number of reports including:
- average throughput of a department
- average waiting time from referral to consultation
- time between specific medical treatments given to a particular patient
- re-occurring health problems of a particular patient
- ... and more
Another issue solved by the Fiorano Healthcare Framework is the maintenance and accuracy of patient records. By using ITK Spine Mini Services, the Fiorano Healthcare Framework can analyze and report on discrepancies between a patient's demographic information that is passed between systems and which is held in the PDS on the SPINE.
Fiorano's peer-to-peer architecture is unique in its ability to allow a system to scale seamlessly from a single hospital deployment to the national deployment of connected systems.
Additionally, the Fiorano ESB exposes a web portal to monitor and manage the integration of the healthcare systems. A few features of the portal include:
- role based access security
- alerting of potential performance issues
- tracking of healthcare messages as they travel between systems
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