Integrating MDA and SOA for improving telemedicine services

Abstract

Through telemedicine, the health sector has seized the opportunity offered by development of information and communications technology (ICT) such as the business or industrial sectors, but ICTs are constantly evolving. To benefit from technological progress it is necessary to adapt the computer applications to these technologies, however this operation is costly to health facilities especially in developing countries. In terms of scientific research, this observation explains the development of model-driven engineering of computer systems such as the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach. MDA is a computer design approach for the development of computer systems that considers separately the functional needs of technical needs of an application. MDA mainly uses the models and their transformations whose traces allow MDA to capitalize expertise in terms of technology and to ensure some rapid modernization of applications to new technologies which results in a significant productivity gain. Today there is a huge requirement worldwide in the interoperable services, in particular with regard to their valuable contribution to the collaboration ability of remote information technology systems. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an interesting architectural pattern in which software components contribute to the collaboration and sharing of services. In this way, the principles of SOA are intended to ensure interoperability between heterogeneous and distributed applications. Web services are at the heart of SOA, which splits functions into different services, accessible over a computer network that enables users to associate and reuse them in the exploitation of applications. Health applications have a strong need to communicate with the remote institutions in order to provide the most relevant services to patients and to collaborate with other medical partners to solve complex tasks. For this purpose, the proposed research work shows how the paradigms of SOA and MDA can be configured to implement medical software applications on an e-health platform. The case study concerns the Telemedicine in French-speaking Africa (RAFT) project in which the joint use of MDA and SOA facilitates knowledge combination and reuse in the management of applications supporting a medical collaborative work environment.