The Application of XML as a Means of Exchanging Discharge Summaries between Hospital Informations Systems.

Achieving interoperability between two or more disparate systems has long been both a strong desire and difficult challenge to information professionals. To make it even more problematic, attributes of an interoperability solution for one situation might not be sufficient for another. However, with the use of XML technologies, interoperability between systems is becoming an attainable goal. In this paper, using the health care system (specifically, discharge summaries) as a backdrop, I explore the issues surrounding an XML-based interoperability solution. The proposed solution creates a connection between a Microsoft Access 2002 database and an Oracle 9i database using XML as the intermediate data format. This paper explores the ramifications of exchanging health data, the current XML application offerings of the two databases in question, and the specific problems that must be addressed when creating an XML-based interoperability solution. The last section explains decision rationales and presents a general framework of steps for reproducing this solution