Connecting Old and New Lab Systems Using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

In this session, we will share knowledge, lessons learned, and practical application in three areas: 

• Building a service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure that connects old and new lab systems
• Identifying the right web services
• Integrating old and new lab systems

The National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI) has built and is using a SOA to foster interoperability between Public Health Lab (PHL) Partners and the labs within CDC’s Coordinating Center for Infectious Disease (CCID).

The SOA has facilitated communication among different applications and LIMS running on various platforms and/or frameworks, whether proprietary or open source.   It has also opened the door for electronic communication to those PHL partners who could not send electronic messages by providing a web-browser based client.  We will share the lessons learned in building the SOA, including choosing technical protocols, security considerations, and points of integration.

The key to realization of the SOA are services that improve collaboration, offer reuse, and streamline processes.  NCPHI’s web services support labs in three major areas: First, sending test requests to the CDC.  Second, tracking shipments and specimens sent to the CDC and third, receiving electronic results reports from the CDC.  The web services facilitate vocabulary interoperability by allowing systems to use standard LOINC, SNOMED, and HL7 vocabularies or vocabularies registered with the PHIN Vocabulary System.  We will share the lessons learned in collecting requirements to identify the right services and implementing services that provide value.

Integration of existing and new applications to use the web services allowed information to be shared and kept consistent across applications, and business processes to be automated without having to make sweeping changes to the existing applications or data structures.  We will share the technical and business challenges we experienced in integrating two technically diverse systems, and automating diverse business processes.