Integrating systems is not difficult. 

I recently received an email asking me about my thoughts on technology convergence versus integration. As I started to write a response to the email I noticed that my response would answer a question that I get here quite often.

I was sitting in a cramped room, surrounded by several software engineers who were passionately arguing among themselves about a data model and how we could integrate two systems seamlessly. I interjected, being the glutton for punishment that I am, what is the value this will deliver? They turned and looked at me with a look that beamed, "Who is this guy and why is he asking about value? Doesn't he understand that there can't be any value if the systems can't even talk?"

How to Optimize Your Building Systems

Well it's good to be back!

It's been a while since I last posted and I have been up to quite a bit. One of the areas I have dug into is Healthcare Information Systems. In the past I mainly interacted at the facilities level so to gain visibility into what happens on the clinical and surgical side of the business has been quite interesting. In this post I am going to pull back the curtains on HL7 (think XML for Healthcare) and describe the various aspects of healthcare informatics! Are you ready to learn all you need to know about HL7 and Healthcare Informatics?

Is your control system becoming the next Tower of Babel?

BACnet, LON, Obix, M-Bus and P-Bus... There is a veritable alphabet soup of controls protocols and systems within the market place and although the industry is moving towards an open framework, we still have a ways to go.