18
Data Interchange in a Distributed Networking
Environment
An
example: Medical Records
The
records are stored in databases of proprietary file
formats,
which poses several problems:
lIn their current state,
the medical records can not be made available on the Web.
lData from one database can
not often be interchanged with the other, within the same country and across continents.
lIn order to conduct
clinical research, large amount of medical data is required: Such research, at
times, involves
doctors from different countries. If there are different formats, in
different agencies, in different countries, the data interchange problem
becomes astronomical.