A Framework for Testing Distributed Healthcare Applications

We present an architectural framework for supporting conformance and interoperability testing among distributed healthcare systems. Healthcare organizations such as hospitals employ information systems that are composed of multiple, distributed applications. These applications need to interoperate seamlessly. This presents a challenging testing problem. We describe in detail a typical healthcare workflow—presenting the applications, their roles, and transactions. We then examine the testing requirements that emanate from the workflow. Next we present a test system and describe how the system can be used to satisfy the testing requirements. Finally, we present a generalized approach based on a service oriented architecture that supports testing of a broad range of healthcare workflows that employ multiple messaging and document data exchange standards. We assert that the proposed testing framework is applicable for a broader class of applications.