Pacific Medical Network Project-pushing the edge of the envelope in information interoperability

In this age of client/server, distributed objects, the Internet, and legacy applications, heterogeneous systems are a fact of life. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Military Health System (MHS) has their share. The DoD Healthcare Information System (HIS) is the Composite Health Care System (CHCS), a MUMPS (Multi-user micro-electromechanical Process Systems) based application. The CHCS at each DoD site has a unique database file and table making data sharing impossible. This uniqueness makes interoperability complex. Adding to the complexity are the numerous advances in information technology that have occurred since CHCS was created. Further complicating these interoperability efforts is the need to share health care information across the DoD and Department of Veteran's Affairs. The Department of Veteran Affairs HIS, Veterans Information System Technology Architecture (VistA) is another MUMPS based unique application. The Pacific Medical Network (PACMEDNET) Project focuses on prototyping solutions for solving these interoperability problems. To this end PACMEDNET is exploiting leading edge technologies such as Distributed Component Object Modeling/Component Object Model (DCOM/COM), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Remote Procedure Calls (RPC), Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and others. Through these prototyping efforts DoD hopes to move the Government computer-based patient record (G-CPR) effort forward and achieve the goals and objectives of CHCS II in creating "a system of systems".