Healthcare information system architecture (HISA) and its middleware models.

The use of middleware to develop widely distributed healthcare information systems (HIS) has become inevitable. However, the fact that many different platforms, even sometimes heterogeneous to each other, are hooked into the same network makes the integration of various middleware components more difficult than some might believe. This paper discusses the HISA standard and proposes extensions to the model that, in turn, could be compliant with other various existing distributed platforms and their middleware components.