Mapping integrating the healthcare environment (IHE) to business process execution language for people (BPEL 4PPL)

The management of diverse information and its integration has gained utmost importance in the healthcare community. Different standards and technologies like electronic business standards (SOAP, BPEL etc), healthcare standards (HL7, DICOM etc) and Internet standards (HTTP, XML etc) provide the integration solutions but none of these standards addresses the healthcare requirements across the internet independently. The sharing of information in healthcare is possible with the healthcare standards like HL7 & DICOM. Along with these standards, integrating the healthcare enterprise (IHE) framework is required for solving interoperability and integration issues of healthcare environment. Integrating the healthcare enterprise (IHE) covers various healthcare domains like radiology, laboratory etc. IHE Laboratory domain defines workflow related to lab orders, tests, specimen and reports. However, it is not possible to carry out lab work without human intervention. Currently business process execution language (BPEL) is the only standard that provides integration in terms of Web service orchestration along with human interaction. This paper proposes a new workflow model for IHE Lab domain that includes the human interaction in Internet based environment using SOA. To support this scenario in healthcare environment, we propose an approach using BPEL for people in IHE which is one of the upcoming solutions for globally accessible communication; providing the flexible and interoperable, adaptable (to any upcoming technologies) mechanism. Also, the specifications required for the design of medical e-services involving people are outlined.