Dear Tom

I want to second your request for an assessment by people in our industry of NEHTA's latest specification for secure messaging.

Having reviewed “Technical Architecture for Implementing Services Concepts..." I concur with David More's assessment. The most appropriate phrase from David's blog is "obvious and self evident". To paraphrase my last comments on this list regarding NEHTA's progress, WHERE'S the MEAT?
NEHTA's efforts are not much good to us until they start addressing genuine implementation issues. At the NEHTA conference we were promised code examples and prototypes for the Web Service interfaces, yet instead all we get is more verbiage telling us what we already know. I don't need another lecture about why we should be using this technology, or what a service is. What I'd like to see is some working pieces of code. I don't deny the need for rigour and clear definition of concepts, but when are they going to move along?

My favourite piece of verbiage in the specification is "Information can be modelled and represented in many different ways. This technical pattern recommends that information can be represented using the XML infoset and encoded using the syntax of XML. It also recommends the use of XML Schema to describe those XML documents"

Really? Such language reminds me of Jimmy Carter explaining sagely that "Inflation is caused by many strange and complicated things interacting in strange and complex ways". Um, thanks Jimmy. Anyone else? Anyone?

One concern I do have concerning the content of the specification is the frequent reference to how "the GP Program" will directly access IHI and HPI services. This fails to acknowledge how messaging is actually performed - by third party communication providers, not by the clinical software vendors. If NEHTA is assuming that vendors can be relied on the implement all this stuff then somebody is living in in a different universe.

Message providers have been using Web Services for quite a while now (haven't we?) and we may as well continue as usual: forging ahead while we wait for NEHTA to come up with something tangible for us to use as a benchmark for what we already have out there, working, in the field.

Finally, I don't quite agree that the specification forms a "roadblock" or in any way impedes progress. Irrelevancy is, well, irrelevant. Nothing it proposes is controversial, wrong, or particularly onerous. Perhaps the development team at NEHTA is run by somebody who worked previously at Foxtel. We are being fed reruns instead of anything new.

I'd like something more for my subscription fee.
Andrew



Tom Bowden wrote:
Gpcg_talk Digest, Vol 16, Issue 18

Hi All,

I am hoping that members of this list might find time to take a look at David More's latest Blog entitled "Media Management, Real Progress or NEHTA Trying to Justify Their Existence?"  While clearly it cannot be said that David has a soft spot for NEHTA, at least some of what he is saying about the documents produced pre-Christmas make a lot of sense to me. David's assessment of the NEHTA web services document as another "“get no one anywhere” effort is in my view right on the button and I have said so to NEHTA, prior to David's commentary.  IMHO, we are no further ahead with clinical communications in 2007, than we were in 2000 and it is a disgrace.

Would it be possible for the learned members of this list to give some useful feedback on all of the NEHTA documents, if necessary roping in colleagues who have specific domain expertise to help.  Clearly, if we let these documents go through unchallenged, and they are as David says arcane and irrelevant, then they will form further roadblocks to progress and we will have no-one but ourselves to blame.  On the other hand, David may be entirely wrong and NEHTA may indeed have ushered in a new dawn for Australian health IT?

Any views on the above? Take a look at this on http://aushealthit.blogspot.com

Kind regards,

Tom Bowden


-- 
Andrew N. Shrosbree B.Sc, B.Ec
Technical Architect
ArgusConnect Pty Ltd
http://www.argusconnect.com.au
Mob: +61 (0)415 645 291

Skype: andrewshroz

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