Question

The health information industry has created standards that define the exchange of patient and medical data between applications. In healthcare HL7 is the most prominent interoperability standard used today so why use Clinical Context Object Workgroup (CCOW) and how does it help? (300 words) No written responses please, only typed.

Answer 1

answer-

We use CCOW because  is a Health Level Seven International standard protocol designed to enable disparate applications to synchronize in real time, and at the user-interface level. It is vendor independent and allows applications to present information at the desktop and/or portal level in a unified way.CCOW works for both client-server and web-based applications. The acronym CCOW stands for "Clinical Context Object Workgroup", a reference to the standards committee within the HL7 group that developed the standard.

The Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Context Object Workgroup (CCOW) is a vendor independent standard that uses context management. Use context management to share information across different healthcare applications.

With context management, a clinician can have access to the same clinical information stored in different healthcare applications. Examples of clinical information are the identity of a patient, identity of a user, or a particular encounter with a patient.

When a clinician logs on to one application within a group of disparate healthcare applications in CCOW, the clinician is also logged on to all the other applications within the group. Similarly, when the clinician selects a patient in one application, the same patient is selected in all the applications.

Clinical Context Object Workgroup is rapidly gaining popularity in the healthcare industry because it provides clinicians with faster access to patient records across multiple applications.

Carefx is one of the vendors that provide a CCOW-compliant context management tool called Fusionfx Context Manager (FCM). IBM® integrates its Context Management solution to provide sign-on automation to all Clinical Context Object Workgroup and non-Clinical Context Object Workgroup applications.

AccessAgent sets the IBM Security Access Manager for Enterprise Single Sign-On user name as the user context in Carefx FCM after the user logs on to AccessAgent. Fusionfx Context Manager manages the mapping of individual application logon accounts for the user name. FCM automates the sign-on to individual Clinical Context Object Workgroup applications by using the mapped accounts.

There is no suitable authentication mechanism between AccessAgent and Fusionfx Context Manager. The Carefx Fusionfx Context Manager assumes that AccessAgent manages the user authentication before the user context is set to Fusionfx Context Manager

It helps us by enabling the clinical end-user to experience the simplicity of interacting with one system, when in reality he or she may be using multiple independent applications through varying interfaces.

he goal of CCOW is seemingly simple, but its implementation is rather complex. CCOW is designed to communicate the name of the active user between various programs on the same machine. The user should only need to log into one application, and the other applications running on the machine will "know" who is logged in. There are a great deal of exceptions and circumstances that make this scenario far more difficult than it appears.

In order to accomplish this task, every CCOW compliant application on the machine must log into a central CCOW server called a Vault. The application sends an encrypted application passcode to verify its identity. Once the application is verified, it may change the active user (also called the "context") on the machine. Each CCOW application also has an application "name" for which there can only be one instance. There is no correct application name (the passcode identifies which application is logging in). There may be multiple instances of the CCOW application connected to the CCOW vault from the same computer. However, they must have different names. One name might be "I like HHAM", while the other might be "I like CCOW". The names are completely arbitrary.

After the application authenticates itself with the CCOW vault, the applications are ready to communicate the context (a.k.a. the active user). Here would be a step-by-step example of a CCOW exchange:

1. The computer boots up and the medical applications load.
2. Each application logs into CCOW using its secret passcode (and unique application name).
3. The compliant application displays a login prompt, and the user logs in as "Mary Jane".
4. Mary Jane has a "CCOW ID". Let us assume that her CCOW ID is "MJane".
5. The compliant application notifies the CCOW vault that "MJane" is now logged in.
6. Once CCOW verifies that "MJane" is a valid CCOW user, the vault notifies all the other applications that "MJane" is logged in.
7. All of the other applications realize that the CCOW ID "MJane" is referring to "Mary Jane" (because they have been configured as such). They log in "Mary Jane" automatically.
8. The transaction is complete. All of the applications running on the machine have been automatically logged in as "Mary Jane".

The purpose of the application passcode is to verify that no unauthorized applications can "hack" into CCOW and change the active user (thereby allowing unauthorized access to medical records).

This system helps to protect our data and increase authentication security on database. This is one of the best solution in health industry protect and access medical data based on set standards.