The web portal services have turned into an imperative part of human life. The portal is an
environment through which a user can gain access to web-based information and tools from
a single Internet location (Brakel, 2003; Mary, 2002; Tsai et al., 2005; Zhu et al., 2004). Early
clinical systems attempted to provide the functionality envisioned by the computer-based
patient records, but were hampered by incompatible standards and a lack of
interconnectivity (Fraser et al., 1997; McDonald et al., 1998). With the development of the
web portal services, almost every large system vendor is now offering a web-based clinical
system (Shepherd, 2000). In particular, consumers of health care are demanding easy access
to relevant health information (Lee et al., 2007; Raghupathi, 1997; Zirpins et al., 2001).
A web portal is built upon layers of services and component modules (Azar et al., 2008;
Freudenstein et al., 2006; Murray, 2002; Murray, 2003; Oo, 2006). The framework must
facilitate the integration of a wide range of data, provide efficient access to relevant content,
and incorporate the ability to organize materials that employees routinely operate.
There is no definitive categorization of the types of web portals (Azar et al., 2008). Strauss
(Strauss, 2002) categorizes web portals into “Horizontal Enterprise Portals” and “Vertical
Enterprise Portals”. The classification of horizontal and vertical portals is the most
commonly used and understood method (Tsai et al., 2005; Brakel, 2003; Zirpins et al., 2001;
A Dynamic Healthcare Portal Design and Enhancements 29
Amor, 1999). In general, portals are in layered, web, architectures (Murray, 2002;
Freudenstein et al., 2006; Murray, 2003).
Murray (Murray, 2002) defined that a healthcare portal strategy is comprised of six layers.
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To accomplish these, each layer addresses its primary functionalities. For examples, in the
Security layer, a single sign on environment for all users is the basis of providing a single
point of entrance (Russler et al., 2001; Hsieh et al., 2006). The Enterprise Application
Integration layer provides the ability to exchange and integrate data among applications via
open standards, e.g. eXtensible Markup Language (XML) (Freudenstein et al., 2006; Murray,
2003).
In addition, the web-based applications are designed to be modular and built on a
distributed, n-tier architecture. The middle tier seamlessly connects the front end, webbased
browsers, to the back end servers, or applications (Shepherd, 2000; Oo, 2006).
Overtime, new business applications and capabilities can simply be added to existing
resources within the highly extensible architecture (Yang et al., 2006). The ability of
identifying and extracting pertinent information in an efficient manner is paramount.
Moreover, the portal should be programmable and flexible so that the information can be
dynamically selected from various sources (Trippe, 2001). The ability to exchange data
among applications and provide application integration enterprise-wide is a fundamental
component of a successful web portal (Rosen, 2000; Rudenstien, 2000). Within healthcare,
the Health Level Seven (HL7) standard defines the format and protocol of messages that are
exchanged among healthcare applications. It enables systems to create XML documents that
incorporate HL7 message content (Shepherd, 2000; Arbor, 2000).