Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Implications for Large Scale Distributed Health Care Enterprises

Large scale distributed health care enterprises need to focus on characteristics such scalability and availability enhancing the integration and interoperability elements provided by the IHE profiles. These characteristics are promoted by architectural approaches like SOA. The paper details main characteristics of SOA-based components and services and their (complementary) relationship to IHE. It also highlights expected challenges in transitioning to SOA encountered by large scale distributed health enterprises from the viewpoint of benefits and cost/risk factors