LinkEHR Interoperability Platform helps you in the integration, normalization and semantic interoperability of clinical data. It is composed of LinkEHR Integration, LinkEHR Studio and LinkEHR Model Manager, which can be used all together or independently, upon your needs.
LinkEHR Integration is a lightweight and flexible integration engine that is able to access and query multiple heterogeneous and distributed data sources, integrating the results into a single XML document. This process can be made on demand and does not require to create a persistent copy of the data. Data is accessed through generic data source adapters (JDBC), without needing any additional modification of existing systems. Also, one LinkEHR Integration can serve as a source of other LinEHR Integration, thus creating a distributed integration system. If any of the integrated systems is not available, LinkEHR Integration continues working with the existing information. The integrated view is easily customizable to fit different user groups, whose needs may change over time.
LinkEHR Integration can be deployed as a central system that serves a full organization, or be embedded into other tools as a light integration service.
Security and privacy are two key elements of LinkEHR Integration. It keeps track of every action done in the system so that the three most relevant questions can be successfully answered: who has accessed to some information, when was the access done, and what information has been obtained.
LinkEHR Studio is a tool that helps implementing the semantic interoperability of health information. It helps you in two of the main tasks you will need to perform:
LinkEHR Studio drastically reduces the time and efforts needed to adopt archetypes in existing EHR systems, from weeks or months to just days.
LinkEHR Studio includes a multi-model archetype editor that is focused on simplifying the archetype definition process, but maintaining access to all the complex details when needed. It incorporates specific interfaces and functionalities to create, specialize and review archetypes. The tool can automatically generate from an archetype definition a mindmap of its structure, summary spreadsheets with the most relevant information of the archetype, sample forms that show how the archetype might look like in a final user interface, sample data instances and validators of existing data.
LinkEHR Studio support multiple reference models and standards. Any information model, standard or proprietary, can be imported into the tool and be used to create archetypes based on it. Examples of information models already supported by LinkEHR Studio are ISO 13606, openEHR, HL7 CDA, ASTM CCR and CDISC ODM.
LinkEHR Studio is connected to the LinkEHR Model Manager and the openEHR CKM servers. At any moment, the user can search and download existing archetypes from those repositories and start editing them right away.
Once we have defined a set of archetypes, one question arises: how can we use them in existing EHR systems and with legacy data?. LinkEHR Studio allows the specification of mappings between archetypes and existing data sources (legacy data repositories). These mappings define how to obtain a data value for each attribute of the archetype from the data sources, performing data transformations if necessary. Transformation can be also defined between different standards. For example, you can transform ISO 13606 data into openEHR data and vice-versa, or you can reuse the information of a medication archetype to create a dispensation document.
Based on that mapping, LinkEHR Studio automatically generates a transformation script that is able to transform legacy data instances into normalized documents using standard XML technologies (XQuery).
LinkEHR Model Manager is a web application for the publication, management and governance of clinical information models and other semantic artefacts, including archetypes, templates, and their related documentation.
LinkEHR Model Manager supports any format of clinical information model representations. The manager is focused on the management of generic concepts, and we can attach to them specific definitions or implementations in the form of, for example, openEHR archetypes, ISO 13606 archetypes, HL7 CDA templates, XML Schemas, or any other format. Moreover, we can attach any other source of documentation, such as PDF files, documents, instance examples, implementation guides, etc. The tool handles the description data, versioning, specialization, validity period, and lifecycle management of clinical information models and semantic artifacts of the repository.
LinkEHR Model Manager uses a social network approach to encourage the participation of professionals. Clinicians can follow a clinical model or archetype, and will be informed of changes of that model, presented in a wall-like format. The tool encourages the creation of work groups for each subdomain and provides a discussion space to ease clinical concept evolution. Users can follow the changes of information models relevant to their interest even if they are not part of the editorial team of that model. Users can have rights assigned for a specific model or a set of models, to ensure quality of clinical models governance. Rights can be managed through roles, assigned to users. New roles can be created at any moment.
