>Various standards bodies, such as ANSI/HL-7, the Andover >Working Group and the Microsoft Healthcare Users Group >(MS-HUG), are working together toward plug-n-play healthcare >communications standards. Health Level 7, Active-X for >Healthcare, and the Enterprise Communicator are just some of >the messaging standards that allow disparate information >systems to communicate openly with one another. The Saturn >Information System has the capability to communicate using >these standards and any other accepted standard that would >emerge in the future. > >North American Drager is a supporting member of the Andover >Working Group as well a member of the Microsoft Healthcare >User Group. Both of these groups support the concept of >plug-n-play implementation of the HL-7 standard. Hospitals >which adopt these tools will realize higher levels of >interoperability without vendor involvement and significant >reductions in the cost and maintenance of interfacing. That's always been the Achilles heel of the proprietary systems in healthcare. By definition, they can't talk to each other. So they devise solutions to problems that shouldn't exist to begin with. This is why I'm sceptical about "interoperability". An open source environment makes these problems go away instantaneously. If VistA didn't exist, an open source initiative in medicine would look a lot like VistA. VistA exists. John Gage
