Hello Members,

Recently somebody wanted to know about the acceptance of RICHE
architecture in NHS etc. Here are a few pertinent facts for all those
interested.

RICHE (Réseau d'Information et de Communication Hospitalier
Européen) started as a project from ESPRIT (European Union's IT
Research & Development Programme). It has now evolved into an open
initiative for collaboration with any user or European organisation
subscribing to its mission. The mission of RICHE is to construct a
framework for open information and communication systems for
healthcare in Europe. The open, modular approach of RICHE towards
hospital information systems makes it possible for hospitals to build
systems according to their local requirements, yet base them on
established European standards.

Groupe RICHE (consisting of user organizations, software and service
companies, collaborating agencies and industries) aims to promote the
RICHE project results for their acceptance and adoption throughout
EUROPE.

At the core of RICHE is the innovative, `intelligent',
cooperative Act Management concept, which supports the transfer of
data between healthcare professionals and allows them to
automatically report on all patient care activities within the
hospital. Both DHE Middleware and NUCLEUS project are based on this
concept.

DHE (Distributed Healthcare Environment), a healthcare-specific
Middleware, is based on the RICHE architecture and includes
functionalities such as the Act Management concept mentioned above.
DHE/RICHE provides full interoperability between completely
independent applications, and also provides complex healthcare-
related services transparently supporting the co-operating
applications.

NUCLEUS, a project developing an integrated EPR, is also based upon
the Act Management concept. Underlying the NUCLEUS EPR solution is a
set of conceptual models, which are compatible with the RICHE
framework conceptual models, as well as with the UK NHS Common Basic
Specification. As a result of the NUCLEUS project, many UK hospitals
(e.g. West Middlesex University Hospital) have or are about to
structure their local IT strategies around the Act Management
principles that NUCLEUS has proposed.

Anyone wishing for more information may contact the following persons
or visit the Websites:

1. Mr. Peter Nicklin: 100064.325@...
Information Management Centre of the NHS-Management Executive
15 Frederick Road, Birmingham B15 1JD, U.K.
Tel.: +44-91-230.36.14; Fax: +44-91-230.45.63

2. Mrs. Joke van WIJNBERGEN
Groupe Riche Co-ordinating Office
Maliebaan 50, PO Box 14074, NL - 3508 SC Utrecht, The Netherlands
Phone: +31-30-2-345-100; Fax: +31-30-2-345-172

3. Prof. Dr. Albert van der Werff
Groupe RICHE S.C. C/o VanderWerff Consult B.V.
Vrouwgeestweg 20, NL-2481 KN Woubrugge, The Netherlands
Tel.: +31-17-29.89.10; Fax: +31-17-29.92.04

4. Bernd Blobel: bernd.blobel@...
Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Medicine,
Institute of Biometrics und Medical Informatics,
Leipziger Str. 44, D-39120 Magdeburg, Germany

5. Bernd Blobel: Object-oriented Middleware Architectures - Trends
for Distributed Health Information Systems (http://www.sgmi-
ssim.ch/bulletin/B34_Blobel.htm)
6. http://www.cordis.lu/esprit/src/results/pages/medicine/medic4.htm
7. http://www.newcastle.research.ec.org/esp-syn/text/2221.html

Regards to all,

Sanjoy Sanyal