Which way to the Web?

Software Magazine, Sept, 1998 by Mathew Schwartz

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Mainframes are great-- for some things. For instance United Health Services' old mainframe is still an excellent data repository for patient records. But you wouldn't want to try and store performance information or security tracking in it; it just wasn't designed for that.

Using Computer Associates' Opal, the King of Prussia, Pa.-based UHS, which runs a chain of hospitals, references an additional accessory database, since the mainframe can't really provide a streamlined audit capability for the hospital. But the nice thing with Opal, says UHS CIO Linda Reino, is that the user doesn't know and doesn't care how the information is being assembled. As long as there's ease of use, they're happy.

UHS is also using Opal to front a database that maintains an audit trail of which charts doctors look at. Not only can they tell if doctors are properly checking all of their charts, but if they're looking at unauthorized charts, then the hospital is aware. Maybe one doctor is covering for another -- then again, maybe not.

Such security is no small concern. As a health-care provider, UHS has very specific parameters set by the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hospital Organizations (JCAHO). If JCAHO doesn't like a hospital's security, then it won't accredit it, which means no one else will deal with the hospital. "I have this unique dilemma where, on one side of the fence, I have my security requirement and my regulatory agency saying you cannot provide free access to data," says Reino. Then, on the other side, there are the users, doctors "Look, if you make it hard for Dr. Brown to have access to information, he's going to piss and moan," she says. With Opal, she hopes to provide "reasonable access with appropriate security parameters in place."

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Screen-scraping technology in Opal is high on the University of Miami (UM) list of successful features. "That's one of the advantages of Opal--what was the fancy term? Repurposing. We were able to take some of the administrative screens that we hadn't made student versions of... let's say they're 50 fields, you just scrape three off," says Michael Zucker, UM's assistant director of application development. Even if a packet sniffer is used during the session, students still don't have access to the unrepresented parts of the screen--the information just isn't transmitted out of the mainframe for student sessions.

The ability to condense screens was an integral part of United Health Services (UHS) choosing Opal as well. "Instead of a user having to go through seven, eight, nine, ten screens from a revisionist standpoint, we have the ability, using Opal, to combine screens," says UHS CIO Linda Reino.

Combining data from disparate screens simplifies workflow, secures access to different kinds of information, and allows for a new GUI--"one of the big d rivers is that I can sex it up a bit," says Reino of the interface. "Instead of saying the words onscreen that a woman has had a migraine, she says, a screen pops up with a graphic of a woman. The trouble area is highlighted, and the symptom listed next to it. It's a boon for doctors who'd rather process graphic, as well as textual, information.