Froid. Free Open Instrument Middleware

Coming together. Visit to Laos

The Mahosot Hospital lab, Vientiane, Laos

Lemoene just back in from Laos, visiting Anousak and Bounmy at Calat ICT and assisting on their Bika Health installation. A real meaningful time was had by all.

The Mahosot Hospital lab in Vientiane is an impressive operation, fifteen+ instruments to interface, fortunately near all by the same manufacturer. Three high volume ones to be done first.

Such is the pressure that standard Bika Health CSV imports will be utilised straight away. Flashing amber, No fix is as permanent as a temporary one. I have the brothers Bounmy and Anousak’s word;-)

Aircon at last!

GNUHealth runs solidly already and OpenHIM be utilised to Interface Bika Health. Similarly Bika Health’s CSV results publication has to do it first.

The project is underfunded and all contributions welcome

Froid for all LIMS and Instruments

With blueprint ASTM and CSV Open Source architecture, code and OpenHIM configurations developed for Froid, any Instrument or REST capable downstream LIMS will be able to connect using it

Edit. Specification document. Pdf

Results Import first

Most popular data flow, Instrument results import, first:

Froid Open Source Instrument Middleware - ASTM

(Diagram updated Dec 18 18)

'Country of a Million bombs'

Most striking remains Laos’ forgotten story of the injuries and casualties still caused by unexploded munition from the American war, cluster bombs et al. The lab is in the same building as the victim rehabilitation centre. More information

Sivousan at left, Bounmy obscured at right. Red sections of Laos pointed to by Anousak were heavily bombed as targets on the Ho Chi Minh trail. 2.5 million tons on Laos over 580,000 missions

OpenHIM

No need to redevelop validation, security, management etc. already available in OpenHIM

LIMS Requirements

For bidirectional Instrument Interfacing, the LIMS has to feature functionality for

Exporting Worksheets and Sample IDs in FHIR format to OpenHIM
Unpack FHIR formatted Analysis results returned
And one day soon, manage robotic analysers

Browser based UI

The UI spreads but stays in the browser and one UI per user category only

Lab staff use the LIMS'
Doctors and Care givers, that of the EMR

Tech support gets access to

Instrument UI, https albeit after Serial RS-232 to Ethernet conversion
IO management, dashboard, alerts, reruns etc, in OpenHIM console
Ouch, overlooked that one might want to troubleshoot the Connectors and Mediators. Logs on the LIMS side, OpenHIM covers the other?

Re Progress

Most difficult ASTM E 1381-94 layer is ready for the Sysmex XT, much appreciated Apostolos. Standardising for ASTM 1238-94 remains.

On the CSV side we need to break into OpenHIM now via a standard Mediator, with Connector done and standardised, thanks Mike.

Go Faster

Submitting your well-funded interface requirement for development will help grease the grind of Froid chassis building.

It becomes feasible where labs have more than one identical instrument or using the same Interface format. Proprietary middleware often charges per Instrument itself.

Froid Interfacing makes very good sense for LIMS and Instrument vendors who want to bundle interfaces with their products, and gain from other LIMS or Instruments interfaces available. OpenHIM features further downstream EMR, DHIS, Dicom channels