By The Open Group
How many failed and de-railed technology solution implementations has your company been through? It’s past time to reevaluate your digital transformation strategy. Become the hero of your business by implementing a standardized operational backbone that saves money, automates processes, and reduces the waste and friction in your current technology solutions to keep you moving forward ahead of your competitors efficiently and effectively.
This document takes an evolutionary approach to align with and build upon existing or upcoming frameworks, standards, and best-practices, such as the TOGAF® standard, Archimate® Modeling Language, or ISO 9001 for healthcare. All application-related screenshots in this article are based on a prototype, modelled in Enterprise Architect.
In this article, I would like to discuss the critical importance of connected healthcare systems during an epidemic or a pandemic. Everyone benefits from connected healthcare systems; people, families, districts, states, nations. Leadership from all levels of healthcare authorities is essential, from hospital workers to governments, to global organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO).
Like many of technology’s better creations, the IT4IT™ Reference Architecture standard was born out of necessity.
The IT landscape is continually shaped by innovation. Despite that being a cause for celebration for consumers and end-users, the introduction of these new technologies – such as the mainframe, the PC, client servers, the Internet, cloud computing, IoT, etc. – meant that the IT function had, effectively, lost track of what it needed to manage and control.
An open standard architecture-based approach to managing the business of IT was needed. This would have to be a holistic, end-to-end, service-based description of everything the IT function needs, and to be a good steward of all the IT components, solutions, and services within its remit. It was this issue that set in motion the train of events that brought us to where we are today. But there are no grounds for complacency. The work continues.
Even today the complexity and pervasiveness of, and the dependency on, IT systems continues to grow. In many cases, in many organizations today, the management solution is a loose collection of siloed processes. We are still not paying enough attention on how to remain in control. That is why the IT4IT standard is such an important instrument to manage IT, and why we have chosen to document how it came to be.
In this second article, I discuss key ideas and concepts underlying the design of a Reference Architecture for Health. Based upon the principles developed in the first article, these ideas and concepts describe what is needed. Together with the essential capabilities that we will introduce in a third article, they provide the input to how to build and deliver such a Reference Architecture. This document uses the following approach:
– From the large to the small: Start with the outer context, the overall Healthcare system, and refine into individual subject areas and building blocks
– Outside in: Start outside the organization, from the perspective of a customer, and design your organization around the needs of the customer
The US Air Force-hosted The Open Group FACE™ & SOSA™ Expo and Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) event was held on September 17, 2019 in Dayton, Ohio at the Dayton Convention Center.
