A Microservices Enterprise Architecture for Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) in Developing Countries

Abstract

Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are established to ensure that health records are efficiently shared and transferred to clinical institutions when needed. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), digital health information exchange between healthcare institutions is almost non-existent due to many reasons including non-standardized health record format, insufficient network infrastructure, and non-interoperable health information systems. Although most healthcare institutions have their own digital patient record system, those systems lack standardized interfaces with others. Those contributed to the slowdown in HIE development in the region. In such environments, microservices architecture can be used to design resilient systems so the development of scalable and interoperable health information exchange is possible. In this article, we propose an approach that utilizes the microservices architecture [1] paradigm along with enterprise architecture (EA) in developing interoperable HIEs within such environments.