New Open Source Interface Engine Speeds Health Information Technology
Integration and Dramatically Reduces Cost of Achieving Interoperability
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., July 18 /PRNewswire/ -- WebReach, Inc., a
leading healthcare IT consultancy and creator of open source Health IT
solutions, today announced the open source release of Mirth 1.0. Mirth
delivers the industry's first free, open source HL7 messaging middleware.
The standards-based Mirth software is designed to dramatically reduce the
time and cost required to achieve health information system
interoperability and data exchange, and to speed secure information sharing
across communities of healthcare professionals. Mirth delivers robust HL7
interface capabilities in an open source package, providing an alternative
to costly proprietary and in-house systems.
Mirth is specifically designed to connect communities of healthcare
professionals for exchange of patient-specific information, such as
laboratory results and medical records. Mirth employs the widely accepted,
standards-based HL7 messaging protocol, facilitating rapid, secure, and
flexible deployment. It speeds the development of interfaces for secure
exchange of data across formats -- for example, from XML to HL7 or vice
versa -- reducing barriers to the formation of health information exchanges
involving diverse information systems, and advancing initiatives aimed at
improving patient safety and continuity of care.
"By releasing Mirth as open source software, we expect to see a user
community quickly develop that includes HIT vendors, systems integrators,
RHIOs, as well as IT staff working within healthcare institutions. Based on
the hundreds of downloads of the alpha and beta version of Mirth completed
already, we suspect there is significant pent up demand for this type of
game-changing information application in healthcare," said Jon Teichrow,
president and chief executive officer of WebReach, Mirth's creator.
Another breakthrough is the fully embeddable nature of the Mirth
middleware. Mirth can be bundled directly into commercial or in-house
clinical information systems, including electronic health record systems,
eliminating the need to add expensive interface engines to these products
in order to get them to exchange data with other systems.
The Java-based Mirth software levers other mature open source projects
such as Mule, Jetty, HAPI, Axis, HSQLDB, and Rhino to provide a dependable,
rapidly implementable HL7 interface engine with many of the features and
capabilities of proprietary systems, but without the associated licensing
cost.
The Mirth architecture also provides an open framework and repository
for creating and sharing HL7 message transformers and adaptors, enabling
those in the healthcare IT community to benefit from the work of others,
and eliminating the redundancy inherent in current processes that require
each organization to develop the "mappings" between systems. This
community-based, open approach has been demonstrated to speed innovation in
other industries -- and is now available for the first time in healthcare.
"Healthcare IT managers are not only under strict budgets, they are
being challenged to develop new applications -- and modernize legacy
applications -- to be interoperable with other healthcare systems," added
Teichrow. "Mirth allows them to deliver on these demands with a
standards-based, open source solution. Interoperability issues and budget
constraints will pervade Healthcare IT for the foreseeable future and Mirth
provides a sound and flexible option at minimal cost."
Key features available in Mirth 1.0 are:
* Easy-to-Use Configuration Tool: Mirth's graphical user interface makes
it easy to create, configure, maintain, and monitor messaging
interfaces.
* Multi-Protocol Source Connectors: LLP, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, JMS,
SSL, J2EE application and more. Mirth also connects to SOAP web
services.
* Custom, built-in, and sharable filters, transformers, and adaptors: map
data from incoming messages to variables, execute custom scripts on
message, construct HL7 messages from data sources, and run XLS
transformations on incoming HL7 or XML encoded messages. Mirth also
provides an open framework for creating and sharing these assets in the
OSS community.
* End-point connectivity: Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL,
PostgreSQL, and any database with JDBC connectivity.
* Security: SSL encryption for all network traffic and 3DES encryption
for Mirth's local message auditing sub-system.
"Mirth's ability to support multi-channel messaging modes,
multi-protocol connectors, multiple languages for transformer scripting,
and a full complement of end-point technologies make it an attractive
interface engine for VistA-based solutions," said Joseph Dal Molin, Interim
President, WorldVistA. "The Mirth Project team evaluated the VistA Office
EHR initiative to ensure integration compatibility. The WorldVistA
community will benefit from this open source complementary technology, and
the sharing of interfaces, by helping make healthcare information
technology easier to integrate, more affordable and accessible."
"Mirth is represented as freely distributable standards-based HIT
messaging middleware and, as such, is in alignment with many of the goals
of the National Health Information Network and NCHICA," said Holt Anderson,
Executive Director of the North Carolina Healthcare Information and
Communications Alliance. "Being an OSS HIT solution, Mirth removes cost and
proprietary technology barriers, fosters the HIT community, and could
provide a nexus for interoperability innovation. These attributes will help
with the rapid acceleration and dissemination of healthcare information
technology, which NCHICA strongly advocates."
"We turned to Mirth to provide our HL7 messaging subsystem when we
developed our Radiology Information System, iRIS," said Phil Jackson, CTO
of Chesapeake Medical Imaging. "Not only was Mirth easy to install and
configure, the Mirth service engineers were with us every step of the way
to make sure our implementation was successful. The Mirth support team from
WebReach was extremely helpful, capable, and attentive to our needs."
The community release signals that Mirth's initial code base is
functionally complete and ready for validation and utilization by the
Health IT OSS community. "For Mirth 1.0, we reviewed existing messaging
middleware products, assessed HL7 interoperability requirements from
real-world use cases, and then developed a solution," said Teichrow. "We
are now turning our focus to building the Mirth community, testing and
proving the project in more applications, and incorporating feedback into
the project roadmap."
Availability
Mirth is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL 1.1) and is
free to download and use for development and production deployments. The
license also allows companies to embed and distribute Mirth free of charge.
Mirth's zero-cost license ensures cost-effective deployment across as many
systems and CPUs as business needs require, with no hidden costs. For more
information about Mirth, please visit http://www.mirthproject.org.
Support and Services
WebReach, Inc. provides a full range of professional support,
consulting, and integration engineering services for Mirth, delivered by
the experts that created Mirth.
About WebReach, Inc.
Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Newport Beach, CA, WebReach serves
some of the nation's largest and most respected healthcare organizations.
WebReach delivers information technology consulting, hosts high
availability secure applications, and designs user-driven health
information solutions. WebReach software is used daily by thousands of
health professionals across the U.S. to streamline care management
processes, and to securely exchange health information. The Mirth Project
is the first in a series of WebReach initiatives aimed at transforming
health information technology by making high-value information technology
utilities available to the healthcare community on an open source basis.
For more information visit http://www.webreachinc.com.
Mirth and WebReach are trademarks of WebReach, Inc. in the United
States and/or other countries. Other company or product names are for
information purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
SOURCE WebReach, Inc.
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Related links:
http://www.webreachinc.com
http://www.mirthproject.org
CONTACT:
Russell Bell of WebReach, Inc.,
+1-949-305-8322, russellb@webreachinc.com
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