Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
fi nal message, and any errors that occurred. Finally, alerts may be created
to notify individuals via email, specifi cally customized based on error
type and channel where required.
20.4 Mule ESB
As we have seen, Mirth is an excellent solution for integrating medical
systems into an analytical data store. However, what about data
from sources such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system or
a spreadsheet containing nursing schedules? These are examples of
data that may be relevant to analytical queries but are not necessarily
clinical in nature. For the same reasons as before, creating individual
point solutions is less favorable than integrated approaches that
consistently handle the details around data transport, error handling,
monitoring, etc. Enterprise Service Buses (ESB) are commonly used to
enable the integration of a heterogeneous set of applications. One of the
most popular open source ESBs is Mule ESB [8]. As previously mentioned,
Mule ESB is one of the foundational components for Mirth.
ESBs are typically used within a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA),
enabling interoperability between a set of loosely coupled services. Each
of the services will defi ne a contract, a way of interacting with the service.
With HL7 services the contract is predetermined thanks to the inherent
standards, but for non-HL7 services this must be created. For example,
an administrator may defi ne a contract for querying fi nancial information
from an ERP. After defi ning such services, they are then registered with
Mule ESB, which provides the plumbing to connect our services to one
another. Mule handles the transport, routing, delivery, and transformation
of the message as well handling alerts and monitoring. However, it
requires more work in setup and confi guration than Mirth because Mule
ESB does not have any specialized knowledge of the various systems with
which it interfaces.
20.5 Unifi ed Medical Language System
(UMLS)
The term heart attack properly refers to a myocardial infarction.
However, non-medical personnel often use the term to mean any sudden
cardiac arrest, even if it is due to a cause such as long QT syndrome. A
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