METHODS: RCKMS has been collaboratively developed with standards in mind, including reliance on Health Level Seven (HL7), Object Management Group (OMG), and relevant semantic (terminology) standards. An overall architecture has been designed and a variety of specific tools have been created to support RCKMS requirements.
RESULTS: An overall technical architecture for RCKMS has been designed and will be presented. A standards-based web services interface has been created as a decision support service, which allows EHR systems to submit initial electronic case reports and evaluates them for reportability to a jurisdiction. The underlying clinical decision support (CDS) engine - OpenCDS - is an Open Source product that is gaining wider use in both the public health and general clinical community. All products developed by this project are available to the Open Source community and as such are freely available for examination and use.
To support the decision support service, a knowledge authoring tool has been created, which allows jurisdictions to define their own decision support rules for reportability through an easy-to-use web interface. This tool will be discussed and displayed, including screenshots of terminology management, reporting specifications and rule maintenance, plus a human readable report of reporting specifications. One possible deployment environment will be described: the Public Health Community Platform (PHCP) provided through the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL).
CONCLUSIONS: Development of the tools required to deploy RCKMS in production is well underway. The standards-based approach helps to ensure sustainability, and the open-source approach encourages collaboration and reuse.