Technology assessment of resources for the emerging US e-health infrastructure: a proposed interoperability model.

Recent mandates in the USA related to the creation of a National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) highlight the need for seamless interconnection of healthcare providers. As a necessary precondition, however, an interoperable infrastructure is needed to help clinicians get access to critical healthcare information upon which their clinical and/or treatment decisions can be based. Relatively little has been done to identify or assess commercially available technologies that might work together to meet the required interoperability requirements. In this exploratory technology assessment we examine three core technologies that could serve as a foundation for secure NHII interoperability: Source-Independent Access Control (SIAC), vault process technology and database-independent multimedia capability.