What is the state of the art in labour-automation data-exchange?

Question

I just came across ASTM E1394-97 "Transferring Information Between Clinical Instruments and Computer Systems", because a supplier offers a system supporting this standard. It looks rather pre-DOS age. I wonder, if labour-automation lives in stone-age ignoring XML, JSON, etc.

Moreover, ASTM E1394-97 seems to be withdrown, and I wonder wat should we use for a new implementation.

Thank you for any insights!

Answer 1

After diving deeper in labour-automation and LIS-interfacing I've found out that ASTM E1394 based protocols are still in use. ASTM E1381/1394 were replaced by LIS2-A1 / LIS01-A2 A more modern approach seems to be HL7 but it seems to be not widely used.

I've found useful these links for implementing my LIS connector:

• http://www.hendricksongroup.com/code_003.aspx - Checksum calculation
• http://www.afinion.net/sites/default/files/adcc%20datasheet.pdf - Just another description EDIT: Broken
• http://code.google.com/p/python-astm/ - ASTM implementation in python
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups/ASTM-E-1394-97-standard-2069898.S.160152562 - LinkedIn group

EDIT

I've implemented an ASTM-client for a new machine and a middleware as a proxy for a couple of some older machines using the original sandard, the third link (pythin astm) and some reference-docs from Abbott. A good help the first time was a pretty old but working tool from Roche. Than I've writen my own tool and used it. Some of the work can be found here, but they are in pretty unmature state. Finally I couldn't maintain both the public and customer's tools and gave the public tools up.

• https://github.com/vheinitz/ASTMViewer
• https://github.com/vheinitz/GoodnightAstm
• https://github.com/vheinitz/culist