Service oriented architecture for clinical decision support: a systematic review and future directions

Abstract

The use of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been identified as a promising approach for improving health care by facilitating reliable clinical decision support (CDS). A review of the literature through October 2013 identified 44 articles on this topic. The review suggests that SOA related technologies such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Service Component Architecture (SCA) have not been generally adopted to impact health IT systems' performance for better care solutions. Additionally, technologies such as Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and architectural approaches like Service Choreography have not been generally exploited among researchers and developers. Based on the experience of other industries and our observation of the evolution of SOA, we found that the greater use of these approaches have the potential to significantly impact SOA implementations for CDS.

Figures

Fig. 1

Study selection process

Fig. 2

Number of publications per year

Fig. 3

Number of publications per architectural approach

Fig. 4

Number of systems per language type

Fig. 5

Example scenario: co-existence of multiple architectural patterns