Facilitating ECG Interoperability: OpenECG Tools
Franco Chiarugi
CMI-HTA, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Development - Hellas, Heraklion, Greece
In the context of the OpenECG project, several efforts have been done towards the simplification of the ECG interoperability. Since the publication of the OpenECG portal with help desk, success stories, the proceedings of the first OpenECG workshop, some public tutorials and the first members' services (development support through the help desk, members' mailing list) in August 2002, a community has been creating. Today this community numbers more than 100 members committed to the achievement of ECG interoperability. The next step has been the creation of a members' area where several members' services have been released to the members. All these services have the purpose of facilitating or simplifying the achievement of ECG interoperability in the real world. This services or tools are: a) A collection of tools and converters b) A collection of SCP-ECG databases c) The OpenECG certification. The tools and converters contain the SCP-ECG parsing through email provided by IFC-CNR that is a preliminary service to the record level certification and a converter between SCP-ECG and the DICOM 3.0 Waveform Supplement 30. In the collection of SCP-ECG Databases several different databases of real ECG are available. In ICS-FORTH database each ECG is accompanied by its format and content analysis that points out the parts not compliant with the SCP-ECG standard. Finally the OpenECG certification allows the submission of ECG records for checking their conformance with the SCP-ECG standard. In case of no error in their format and content an OpenECG certificate can be provided to the submitter on demand. In the next months, the SW repository with the source code of an SCP-ECG viewer and parser will be made available to all the members. The OpenECG consortium goal is to enrich this members' area with useful tools for a better interoperability of ECG coming from different manufacturers.
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