Like most hospitals, the Beaumont in Dublin faces a constant battle to improve patient care and reduce waiting times. Unlike most hospitals, however, the Beaumont is using enterprise integration based on Web services technology to speed up processes such as consulting appointments and the delivery of lab results.
The hospital recently completed the rollout of an integration platform based on BEA Weblogic, which ties together the hospital's laboratories and booking systems with GP's patient records, over the Internet. The aim is to provide secure, two-way communication between GPs and the hospital, explained Tony Kenny, the hospital's IT manager.
"The benefit of integration for us is simply releasing people from the tyranny of playing phone tag," he said. "Making the process asynchronous means we can automate processes and save that wasted time."
The integration layer is based on JCA standards, which was important to the Beaumont. "We knew that other organisations were starting to look at Web-based communication, and this would enable people to build their systems to the same standards as us," said Kenny. "It means we don't have to worry about their systems, which we have no control over, just to provide them with a browser front-end they can use."
Like building with Lego
Adapting to a service-oriented architecture isn't easy, Kenny said. "It's like going from building a solid wall brick by brick to building with Lego bricks that can be put up in loads of different ways," he added. "We wasted a lot of time trying to convert files into the HP format we'd used before; until the consultant told us we didn't need to if we presented the information as a service call. It seems obvious now but it's a totally new way of thinking." Other stumbling blocks included hooking the integration server up to the hospital's HP 3000 server, which according to him is "a lovely bit of technology, just happens to be 25 years old."
With the system live, the hospital now has a working messaging infrastructure that is being extended to allow doctors to book operating theatres. The groundwork done already makes this process very simple, he said. "Previously, provisioning something like that would take two months, but now we can do it with Web services, connect it in a very straightforward way, and it takes a few days."
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