Standards Matchmaking
Industry group works to fit round products into square architectures

May 1999 - Healthcare Informatics

WOULD YOU LIKE TO STOP shoehorning together proprietary commercial products and architectures? So would system architect John Weiler. And he's doing something about it.

Through the Interoperability Clearinghouse (IC), Weiler, chief repository builder and knowledge manager, is building a virtual environment in which end users can build architectural models and, in a sense, "try on" an IT product to see if it fits before they buy. You could find out if that pharmacy system the staff pharmacists like so much is really a good fit in your organizational architecture by accessing the IC via a Web-based interface and plugging it into your architecture.

To build the clearinghouse's knowledge base, Weiler, who also is chief technology officer and founder of the OBJECTive Technology Group, a system architect firm in Alexandria, Va., is hosting a potluck and asking everybody to bring their specialty. Standards organizations bring standards, defined interfaces and dynamic frameworks. Vendors add product specifications and standards compliance levels. Certification and validation organizations contribute test results. End users augment the meal with lessons learned from successful IT deployments. The more dishes on the table, the greater the number of virtual frameworks possible. "If everybody just does a little bit, a seemingly insurmountable task becomes doable," says Weiler.

The IC's goal is to consolidate the Diaspora of standards, technologies, product specifications and successful IT configuration know-how into a single body of knowledge. "Someone is already doing each of the pieces: someone is implementing, someone is validating, someone is creating standards--but there has been no way to pull it all together," says Weiler. Now, thanks to object and Internet technologies, it's possible.

A key activity for the IC will be to create a consortium of standards organizations across all industries. There are vertical industry efforts such as the healthcare domain's Healthcare Informatics Standards Board (HISB), which are trying to get their arms around standards that apply in their domain. But there has been little effort at identifying standards that apply across industries. "We don't even have a reference profile for where these thousands of standards fit," says Weiler. It is an overwhelming task for anyone to identify and classify standards appropriate to any given IT implementation. The IC wants to simplify the process and validate their utility.

Begun only last fall, the cross-industry venture has received support from major vendors, standards organizations and government and private healthcare groups exceeding all expectations. Thanks to significant contributions from organizations such as Microsoft, IBM, LockheedMartin, Ernst & Young, Sun Microsystems and the Object Management Group, the IC is way ahead of schedule. The IC business model, concept of operations, technical requirements, system design and workflow
are now in place and four vertical industry initiatives--including healthcare--are under way. The first rollout--with minimal capabilities--is scheduled for April.

Regrettably, this clearinghouse is not for everyone. For now, only large organizations need apply. Although the IC does not propose high subscription rates or prohibit membership, it simply doesn't make economic sense for small organizations. But for large organizations--such as the Department of Defense which spends millions of dollars on IT projects annually and loses millions of the same dollars on failed implementations--it makes sense.

If the IC can deliver on its promise to solve implementation problems before purchase and installation, and save lots of time, money and frustration, it is destined to become the definitive IT resource for building interoperable system architectures.

For more information, contact info@e-interop.com, 703-768-4975, or visit any of the following URLs;

 
http://www.omg.org/techprocess/meetings/ic.html
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?981113.whsoft.htm
http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0208/fcw-newsinterop-2-8-99.html
http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1999/February8/1c.htm
http://www.ntgov.com/gcn/gcn/1999/march29/16.htm
http://www.healthcare-informatics.com/issues/1999/05_99/standards.htm


Charlene Marietti is senior technology writer at Healthcare Informatics.




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