I spent some time looking at the documentation of the “Project HealthDesign Common Platform“, a Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Project. This is an interesting project to provide an Open Source platform to facilitate the building and sharing of applications for Personal Health Record systems. As many Open Source projects they are built to help communities or companies get a step-up on projects with a common software base. Think of these projects as Lego kits that you start with a basic design that you can add your idea and designs to produce a unique finished product. Open Source projects are not for novices, they demand highly skilled Java EE (Enterprise Edition) trained software engineers to build a useful product. The other interesting point is that Open Source Projects like this one tend to follow commercial products as an alternative to the high cost. Most HIT systems out today are based on Microsoft which doesn’t lend itself to Open Source Projects. Most Open Source projects are UNIX based and have a large community of support. I am supportive of RWF for stepping out of the Microsoft controlled domain to support Open Source for health care. This effort and strategy will reduce cost in the long term.
The documentation at first glance looks very good and is extensive. One thing that you have to remember about Open Source projects is that many times this is all of the information that you are going to get on the software other than digging into the code to understand or correct problems. There are blogs that developers can share information, but normally no paid support.
The design is based on Java EE 5 this is a structured design that is based on a system designed by SUN Micro Systems. The software must have an application server to support the development and runtime (make it work). There are Open Source options (e.g., JBoss, Glassfish) and commercial paid version (e.g., IBM’s WebSphear and BEA Weblogic) My company has had extensive experience with WebSphere, WebLogic and JBoss. The data base is MySQL another OpenSource project.
The basic module provides WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) XML based systems to support WebServices which facilitates common communication via the Web with disparate system (e.g., Microsoft HealthVault). An Authentication Service is provided to facilitate single sign-on and access security. A Registry Service is provided to support patient processing (ad, edit, delete) and a Observation Service which is one of RWF projects ODL (Observation of Daily Living).
This project is a good step for providing a common base software structure to facilitate Open Source development for Health Care. It will be up to Software Engineers to decide if this is right for their project. As all Open Source projects they need support to gain traction. Time will tell.
For more of on Open Source for health care; amednews
Jeff Brandt
www.comsi.com