Danderyd Hospital's e-messaging service, called DS-EDI,
is a large, well-established service within the Public Health
Services of Stockholm County Council. The service exchanges
over 1.2 million messages a year to 250 health care institutions,
i.e. hospitals, health centers, GPs, privately owned medical
facilities, laboratories and the National Corporation of
Swedish Pharmacies (Apoteket AB).
The e-messaging service DS-EDI sends laboratory test results
straight into the various health care centers' information
systems and it also transfers Stockholm County Council's
e-prescriptions to the National Corporation of Swedish Pharmacies
(Apoteket AB). "By sending information electronically
within the health care sector, you can obtain substantial
cost reductions. You will save time and money through rationalization
of the administration. The risk of errors made in the handling
of the information will also be minimized", says Thomas
Nilsson, Project Manager at WM-data Consulting AB. WM-data
handles the development and maintenance of DS-EDI.
The goal of the service is that it, besides transferring
health care-related information, will transfer the County
Council's future electronic business transactions. Electronic
messages within the County Council does not only have to
consist of laboratory test results, referrals or prescriptions.
Also invoices, orders and delivery acknowledgements can
be sent via the messaging service. The goal is to use the
messaging service in order to exchange many different kinds
of information, e.g. e-invoices. By making business transactions
electronically, the County Councils can save a lot of money.
The original requirements -and the solution
Formerly, DS-EDI constituted of an old EDI system, which
was conceived to have limited functionality and not enough
capacity to handle the message volume flowing through the
system.
Danderyd Hospital issued a procurement of a messaging system.,
which was won by WM-data, combined with the xTrade Business
Communications Suite. The installation was made in spring
2001. The service is based on xTrade Business Hub servers.
It is very reliable and has an easily managed, centralized
administration.
"Despite the large message flow, the service's full
capacity is far from being reached. When you want to expand
the service's area of use, you can easily add new message
formats or start communicating over protocols such as TCP/IP,
SMTP, OFTP or IBM MQ", says Thomas Nilsson.
DS-EDI is a large service. 250 parties, i.e. electronic
healthcare information systems such as Medidoc or Profdoc
systems, are connected. The parties range from small privately
owned health centers to large health care institutions with
several hundred employees.
The messaging service is based on two clustered xTrade Business
Hub servers handling the communication as well as the conversion
of messages. Most of the communication is made within SLL
net, Stockholm County Council's own net. The communication
is mostly carried out over FTP, but the communication to
the National Corporation of Swedish Pharmacies (Apoteket
AB) uses X.435.
All messages are encrypted, thereby data security is guaranteed.
The content is encrypted from start to finish. DS-EDI has
advanced logging functionality and through the logging,
every message and its exact route can be traced. All messages
are saved in the server during a specified period of time.
That way DS-EDI can work closely with the laboratories when
a message needs to be troubleshot or traced. If a laboratory
test result of some reason has not arrived at an electronic
healthcare information system, you can easily see how far
the message has been sent and thereby swiftly handle any
problems.
As an extra security function and for ensuring easy monitoring
of the system 24 hours a day, an xTrade Alarm Server is
used. It monitors the system and sends alarms to beepers
when an error occurs.
