Entwicklung eines Datenaustauschformats im Rahmen einer Referenzarchitektur für mobile telemedizinische Netzwerke

Although the medical and economical advantages are obvious, no area wide use of telemedicine can be seen. The necessary technologies are available in a cost-efficient manner, but in the telemedical range there are a lot of incompatibilities of the technical modules among each other. The reason is a missing data exchange format for all applications. Against the background of these problems there is a need for a telemedical reference architecture, which connects the associates of the health care system. Based on a transparent and homogeneous communication the possibility of linking different telemedical components together to a complex network increases. The goal of this work is to develop a reference architecture for a technology-independent care of patients. The motivation of developing a reference architecture for mobile telemedical networks comes from the lawfully particularities of telemedicine and the lack of former solutions. The integral approach of the acquired three-level model assimilates the different problems. The reference architecture is affected through three perspectives on different stages of realisation. The macroscopical perspective describes the integral target state of the health care system. The organisational perspective looks at the approach of a systematically development of telemedical services and solutions. The operational perspective shows the precise technical challenges to realise a telemedical product. It represents the technological base of the reference architecture and is a central aspect in the three-level model. For the realisation of the reference architecture, the data exchange format has a central position, so that a list of requirements was created which the exchange format has to fulfil. The intensive analysis of existing data exchange formats shows their deficits for a use in the defined solution space. On this account a new data exchange format was created, which satisfies all requirements of the network. The capability of the new standard was verified in a prototypical development environment. In the end the complete communication path can be realised with the help of the exchange format according to the reference architecture both at the medical and the patient side.