Enterprise Integration Patterns in Healthcare Messaging : Architectures, Design and Experiences

Integration of disparate systems, each of which does a specific job, is one of the major challenges in healthcare informatics. The objective of this presentation is to elucidate the genesis of this problem and trace the developments that have taken place in integration architectures based on sound engineering principles. Some of the driving factors in any integration effort are issues of decentralization, loose coupling, ease of configuration and focus on components that have business values. The first part of the presentation covers the fundamental integration architecture approaches and how they map to evolving platform technologies. The emergence of Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) as the common language for communicating integration architecture and its relationship to technology platforms are explained. The ability to look at a vendor supplied product and evaluate its merits, limitations and applicability based on the knowledge of the EIPs is highlighted. How proprietary ad-hoc architectures are being migrated to conform to this standard way of articulating design is discussed. The relevance of EIPs in Public Health software projects in a loosely coupled architecture is stressed. The second part of the presentation discusses the work currently in progress at Emergint Technologies, Inc., to migrate their messaging integration product to its next generation using EIPs. Among many future architectural directions available for integration, the reasons for the adoption of JBI (Java Business Integration) are given. This specification encapsulates all the current streams of integration efforts and works on all platforms. The design of the rule-based routing engine at the heart of the product is shown. Initial results in terms of ease of configuration, flexibility and efficiency are highlighted. The low cost of ownership of this platform as opposed to proprietary solutions is shown. This product is highlighted as an example of the latest generation of healthcare integration platforms.