Development of management system for electric referral documents and healthcare information exchanging based on standardization protocols

Over the past few years, several studies have been carried out on a healthcare information exchanging systems, but without any compatibility. For the collaboration among clinics and hospitals, a compatible system based on the standardized protocols should be established using existing ICT infrastructures. In January 2006, the Shizuoka Electronic Medical Record System designed for healthcare information exchanging using the international standards of information exchange protocol, HL7 and DICOM was developed by the Department of Health and Welfare in Shizuoka. Although, the infrastructures of standardization for the healthcare information exchange were realized, it has possible issues that need to be resolved and a large scale network system has not yet been reported. As a solution for these issues, we propose a prototype system of a Management System for Electric Referral Documents based on HL7 and DICOM using XML and Web application. The purpose of our research is to contribute to the implementation of a large scale and functional healthcare network using XML technology and Web application. We utilized the Management System for electric referral documents based on HL7 and DICOM for healthcare information among medical institutions. A prototype system was developed and its technical feasibility was confirmed by a laboratory test.