The Foundation: Service Oriented Architecture
VLink is based on a number of community open standards, including industry standard Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). VLink takes SOA and builds upon it by adding adapters and management infrastructure to connect disparate systems quickly and flexibly.
High-level Technical Features
- Distributed and event-driven services - Loose coupling means a service may be invoked remotely as easily as if it were local
- Secure and reliable - The transport mechanisms of VLink are industry standards such as PKI and SSL. These building blocks guarantee that messages are delivered, transactional integrity is maintained and data is safe from attackers
- Federated Management - VLink allows administrators of member systems to control the local aspects of their data, while delivering remote centralized management.
- Real-time integration - With VLink, data propagation occurs when the event is triggered. This provides for the use of Business Process Monitoring (BPM), which can add significant value by signaling problems immediately.
- Service Granularity - Each participating system may contribute only the data needed to provide services, without opening up proprietary information, or collecting more data than necessary
VLink Technical Overview
In this example, when lab data is entered in a hospital laboratory, the technician uses an existing software program installed on-site. Within the hospital the software connects to the hospital’s Clinical Information Management Systems (CIMS), either directly or by sending HL7 messages from the lab computer. The VLink connector then grabs the data from the hospital’s CIMS, and sends it over the internet to a verified and authorized physicians’ EMR software, in a secure and audited manner.
The VLink Connector places the patient data into a secure envelope, and addresses the envelope with appropriate recipient information. Once packaged, the data is routed to the recipient, who has the only key to open the envelope. This means that data integrity and privacy are guaranteed along the entire transport route.
Because VLink does not access the contents of the message, any data can be sent between two providers, saving them from having to manually type or scan documents into the EMR. Once the data is imported, the EMR can process the information as if it were manually entered directly into the system, such as paging for abnormal results, etc.