The architectural landscape of healthcare information systems is extremely diverse representing a collectionrnof many different hardware and operating platforms as well as applications developed in a multitude ofrndevelopment environments and programming languages. The real struggle in healthcare informationrntechnology is the need to find means to expand the effective use of these existing systems while at the same timernincreasing their functional capabilities. One answer to this dilemma is the Web Services model. Web servicesrnare application modules that provide the underlying technologies necessary to exchange data and otherrnservices between applications residing on the Internet. Standards used to support the Web services modelrninclude the XML based specifications of UDDI for discovery of Web services, WSDL for describing Webrnservices and SOAP for transporting messages and exchanging data. Given all the interest in this technologyrnand the projected benefits Web services will bring to healthcare technology, it would be expected thatrnhealthcare organizations are embracing the Web services model. The purpose of this research project is tornassess what is happening in the healthcare arena in relation to Web services. The first part of this project,rnwhich is presented in this paper, is to investigate the availability of published healthcare related Web services.rnThe next phase of the research will be to identify specific healthcare organizations that are developing Webrnservices and assessing how those Web services are being implemented.
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