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Patient Data Online and On Time


By Bill Briggs, Senior Editor August 2003

Fed up with faxes, two years ago physicians affiliated with many of Health Management Associates Inc.'s hospitals started clamoring for online access to patient information.

Naples, Fla.-based HMA, which operates 44 hospitals in 14 states, implemented an application that did just that. But physicians gave the application lukewarm reviews, recalls Tim Prentis, manager of information systems programming and development.

The software did not allow users to manipulate data on-screen and had a "green screen" interface, technology that was deemed pass‚.

So HMA decided to go back to the future. It purchased an application from Compuflex International, Woodland Hills, Calif., that's based on "Web Services" technology, which is designed to take advantage of legacy information systems and enable rapid deployment of new applications. HMA and Compuflex then used the application, called WebAccel, to build the delivery system's online portal.

The Web portal provides physicians and their staffs real-time access to clinical, financial and demographic patient data. And the application's underlying architecture enabled HMA to implement the portal without redesigning its I.T. infrastructure or buying new databases or servers.

"We have a lot of proprietary information systems," including lab, radiology and emergency department," Prentis says. "This technology pulls them together."

For an organization that prides itself on its information system development skills, HMA's I.T. staff was at a loss when it began exploring Web-based technology, Prentis says.

Prentis and his colleagues considered off-the-shelf applications, but decided to purchase Compuflex's WebAccel application so they could "get to the Web quickly and develop our own architecture and data content," he explains.

Web Services

Web Services technology uses advanced programming languages and protocols, such as XML and simple object access protocol, or SOAP, to enable organizations to "re-use" functions from existing information systems on the Internet without redesigning their I.T. infrastructures.

Most Web applications are built by feeding data from disparate legacy systems into a Web server. Web Services technology is designed to help organizations skip that step. Using Web Services, organizations can create applications to pull data directly from legacy systems into a Web portal.

Proponents hope Web Services technology will make portal implementations faster and cheaper, and also enable business partners to seamlessly link their information systems. The technology is being developed by the Web Services Interoperability Organization, which has more than 160 software vendor members.

Web Services technology also will serve HMA in the future as more vendors move to open standards, Prentis predicts.

"We tried to plan ahead thinking that, as more Web-based systems are built, a lot of vendors would be designing software with Web Services in mind," he explains. "We are looking at this to grow and become our electronic medical records system," Prentis adds.

Clean delivery

Users can access the portal via the delivery system's corporate Web site. Once on the HMA site, they enter a user ID and password. A single-sign-on application then "tunnels" them to all the information systems and patient data they're authorized to access. Encryption technology is used to scramble data being sent to the portal.

The portal has given HMA's hospitals "a clean way to deliver information," Prentis says, which in turn improves operating efficiency and patient care.

It's also given them an opportunity to improve relations with affiliated physicians, he says. "We wanted to get some good `PR' with physicians by helping them work at their convenience," he adds.

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