This makes a lot of sense….
This makes a lot of sense….
by John H. Jones
I was reading a very interesting blog this evening about the problems that Bausch & Lomb is experiencing with their Contact Lens Fluids and the relation to Fusarium Keratitis, an eye fungus that can possibly cause blindness in contact lens wearers. The blog author provides a great idea about integration of public health and incident data using SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).
I found this very interesting because it gives a great example of how web services can be used in a practical way, to share data between public health agencies that have systems that are as diverse and different as the languages spoken by their respective government agencies.
While the LABLynx LIMS has been utilizing SOA, XML and Web Services for over 5 years as part of our web browser based LIMS, we have never thought about publishing web services for our customers to configure and share data with other systems beyond our customer’s internal borders. It has generally been politically WAY incorrect to do that.
I think the time may be coming for companies and governments to explore the integration of their varying systems by way of web services. This example case is a clear case of where the benefits outweigh the risks. We really need to share data on a global and real time basis. Applications that are ripe for this include: Forensics, Public Health & Safety, Environmental and Agriculture.
