On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Horst Herb wrote: > On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 20:56, Andrew Ho wrote: > > � Specifically, what are the benefits of inter-connecting distributed > > systems via email messages instead of https, for example? > > Because we *don't* have distributed systems. Interoperability of systems in > Australia is very close to zero.
Horst, I make use of web-based email services and they work quite nicely. Perhaps that could work well in Australia too? Each physician (using web-browser or their EMR) can log-onto a web-site (via https) to retrieve messages meant for them and/or their EMR (via attached HL7 messages). There can be more than one such web-sites - in which case they can swap email messages. These web-base email systems are quite well developed. UCLA happens to use IMP, from the GNU Horde project (http://horde.org/imp/). It can probably be easily modified if Australia needs something special. How is Argus better than this? Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org
