Clinical Portal

While the term 'portal' has become common place, it has also become synonymous with Web applications that provide read-only access to reference data. Such data spans the gamut from lab results to drug information to the cafeteria menu. In essence, today's portals have become little more than an on-line library or electronic notice board.

Consequently, we have observed that clinicians find such portals useful, but not consider them a functional replacement for their existing applications. Rather than creating a true single-view environment, the portal is perceived as yet-another-system with only ALT-TAB (or CCOW style) integration with the existing systems.

MITEM's approach is different. We build transactional portals that provide a single- view, composite applications that displays data from multiple systems. All data is communicated in real-time via bi-directional interfaces. This means that clinicians have the very latest patient data available for making medical decisions. It also means they can change (update) the data, including placing orders electronically. A MITEM-based solution can be developed using HTML web pages, but for the best user experience, and most natural clinical workflow, we recommend a Macromedia Flash front-end.

There are two MITEM products that are relevant to clinical portal development. The first is Blue Iris, an out-of-the-box transactional portal that interfaces to MEDITECH and other legacy hospital information systems. The second is MitemView, our renowned legacy integration platform. MitemView can be used to build a custom portal that front-ends myriad hospital information systems from virtually any vendor. MitemView supports legacy applications like HBOC Star, HBOC Series 2000, HBOC HealthQuest, MEDITECH MAGIC, Siemens INVISION, Siemens MedSeries4, CPSI, Dairyland and Keane First Coast. MitemView also supports any HL7 interface and data stream connections like devices sitting on a Medical Information Bus.