An interoperability layer enables disparate health information systems to more easily communicate between each other in order to exchange information. This page hold the documentation produced by the Interoperability Layer Community group under the OpenHIE project.

For more details about our call that are held twice a month, see: OpenHIM Community Call

Call topics and points for discussion are managed at: https://trello.com/b/prE5M3fh 

Process Overview

As a part for the RHEA project an HIE has been developed for maternal health in Rwanda. For more information about this implementation see: here. During this implementation the OpenHIM (http://openhim.org/) was developed. This is expected to work for the pilot implementation for the RHEA project that is planned to run in a single district of Rwanda, however, it is not know if this instance will scale to a national level and if the technology is appropriate for national scale.

As a part of the OpenHIE project this community is tasked with reviewing and evaluating what makes a good interoperability layer going into the future and seeks to determine what technologies would be suit an interoperability layer for our purposes.

Methodology

This section shows the methodology for going through the process of evaluating options for an interoperability layer. As we work on each of these items, links will be added to the relevant documentation that shows the work that is currently being done on that item.

• What is an interoperability layer [Completed, need final community review and comments]

• Document use cases

• Document requirements

• Performance test current OpenHIM [Ongoing - Jembi]

• Generate estimated load figure for national deployment [Ongoing - Jembi]

• Create performance testing framework

• Gather data from tests

• Compile performance data into a report

• Investigate and evaluate alternate orchestration/mediation engines or options 

• Enumerate and explore alternatives

• Detail each alternative, it's implications and pros/cons

• Develop evaluation tool from requirements [Initial version complete, out for community comment and revision]

• Evaluate each tools against the evaluation tool

• Compile results 

• Investigate use of standards in OpenHIM and each option 
• Performs Initial Designs
  • OpenHIM Design Sketches from Justin's visit to jembi
    • Design Session HIM
      
    • Open HIM Scalability Discussion
      

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Write up results of evaluation 

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Detail each option, with input from the evaluation results

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