This project is a cooperative effort between the Health and Medical Information Office (CHIO/HMIC) of VHA’s Office of Health Information (OHI) with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA’s) Office of Information and Technology (OIT) to catalyze and support VA’s next generation of Health Information.
Technik staff currently supports the Medora Development Group (MDG) in the development of a suite of Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) web services known as Medical Domain Web Services (MDWS) to access VistA, a critical legacy system, data via Hypertext Transfer Protocol and standard RPC. Technik also develops JavaScript Objects (JSON) that provides an innovative method to perform operations within external web applications using MDWS as a middle tier. MDWS and JSON have enabled the reengineering of various applications in the clinical domain to support the VA mission. This is expected to drive substantial improvements into processes involving cancer screening, emergency department management, medication management, text searching and patient appointments and schedules.
Project Accomplishments
Project accomplishments and associated activities are described below.
Technik staff implements Javascript Objects (JSON) to develop “Poppies”. Poppies are small HTML forms that perform operations with or on live VistA data using MDWS as a middle tier. Poppies have “modules” that perform certain functionality like site login, patient lookup, progress note writing, etc.
Specific tasks assigned to our team on this project include:
- Development of additional MDOs in the clinical domain to support re-engineering of the VA electronic medical record and other applications,
- Development of additional SOAP web services to expose MDOs
- Full implementation of Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) for MDWS.
- Develop HTML forms with specified functionality using MDWS that can be incorporated into the web application
Task 1: Project Management and Reporting
Technik created a Project Management Plan (PMP), which is the blue print that lays out our approach, timeline, and tools to be used in execution of the contract. The PMP specifies the schedule, milestones, risks, and resource support. Deliverables included: project management plan and project master schedule in PMAS format, weekly status meeting minutes, monthly project status reports and lessons learned documentation.
Task 2: Design Development, Testing, Deployment, Training and Support of Poppies
- Perform a Thorough Survey and Analysis of the existing source code to fully understand all of the business functionality of the current MDWS and MDO code
- Define Architecture to expose the innovation application RPC calls as Web Service calls. This has been accomplished by wrapping the RPC calls in C# code and exposing as MDWS Web Service calls.
- Developed Source Code:
We are developing software in a Service Oriented Architecture in the VA environment that includes web applications, web services, Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs), VistA and other SQL type data bases. Sub task include:
- Developing additional MDWS and/or MDO code to add to the library of web services.
- Enhancing current functionality through development of MDWS and MDOs.
- Developing additional MDOs in the clinical domain.
- Support UDDI integration for MDWS.
- Developing small HTML forms (Poppies) to be incorporated into Web applications.
- Determining functionality to be added to support business needs of the MDWS users.
- Application integration with CPRS and VistA using VistaLink and SOAP MDWS calls.
- Application Testing: We perform unit and integration testing of our source code and prototype applications. VA customers perform end user acceptance testing. Deliverables included: test plans, test results and acceptance results.
- Deployment: The web services and MDO code are deployed on the innovations sandbox and VA network.
- Training: Technik provided training support in the operation of the Poppies and MDWS services
- User Documentation: Technik is providing user documentation for these services.
Overall Performance: Excellent
Delivery: Technik adhered to all deadlines and produced deliverables in a timely manner.
Cost Control: Technik performed within cost and budget.
Corrective Actions Taken: None
Technologies Used
Technologies used include: VistA, C#, Java, J2EE, BEA Web Logic, Vista Link RPC calls, Intersystems Cache Database