Open Source Interface Engine Simplifies RIS,PACS, HIS Integration

A new open-source interface engine simplifies radiology information system (RIS), hospital information system (HIS), and picture archive and communication system (PACS) integration. The engine's performance enhancements and full-spectrum messaging features provide a ready solution for major health information exchanges (HIE) and large hospitals.

WebReach, Inc. (Irvine, CA, USA), a healthcare information technology (IT) consultancy and creator of open source health IT solutions, announced the open source release of Mirth 1.7.1, which includes support for the Digital Imaging in Medicine (DICOM) standard. DICOM extends the growing range of Mirth's supported standards, which already include HL (health level) 7 v2 and v3, X12, EDI (electronic data interchange), XML (extensible markup language), and NCPDP (National Council for Prescription Drug Programs). Mirth is gaining traction as the "Linux of Healthcare” because of its standards-based healthcare messaging capabilities and modular open source code base.

Mirth is designed to dramatically reduce the time and cost required to achieve health information system interoperability and data exchange, and to speed secure information sharing across communities of healthcare professionals. Mirth's DICOM support was the result of collaboration with the dcm4che open source community, which focuses on clinical image and object management applications and utilities. Mirth 1.7.1 also includes bug fixes, improved enterprise features such as support for high-volume transaction processing, an improved installer, and a plug-in architecture to simplify the inclusion and distribution of Mirth extensions.

"The goal of the Mirth Project is to provide Health IT [HIT] infrastructure tools to support the smooth and secure flow of public open standards-based clinical and administrative information,” said Jon Teichrow, president of WebReach, Mirth's main corporate sponsor. "The Mirth Project resonates with health information exchanges, EHR [electronic health records] and PHR [personal health record] vendors, laboratories, hospitals, and HIT system integrators. DICOM support is a natural extension for Mirth to provide system integrators and RIS and PACS vendors with a low-cost interoperability solution.”

WebReach provides a full range of professional support, consulting, and integration engineering services for Mirth, delivered by the experts that created the system. Mirth is rapidly becoming the interface engine of choice for health information-system data exchange. Mirth is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL 1.1) and is free to download and use for development and production deployments. The license also allows companies to embed and distribute Mirth free of charge. Mirth's zero-cost license ensures cost-effective deployment across as many systems and central processing units (CPUs) as business needs require, with no hidden costs.

WebReach provides information technology consulting, hosts high availability secure applications, and designs user-driven health information solutions. WebReach software is used daily by thousands of health professionals to streamline care management processes, and to securely exchange health information. The Mirth Project is the first in a series of WebReach initiatives aimed at transforming health information technology by making high-value information technology utilities available to the healthcare community on an open source basis.


Related Links:
WebReach
Mirth Project