Designing Telemedicine solutions
- John Schneider
Examples of different application types that can be built using the eHealth infrastructure.
Deployment models represent a specific type of deployment of Telemedicine Solutions.
Single Page Application (SPA) or server-side generation of web pages
All logic in browser or server-side components such as BFF
Using the KAM micro frontend architecture
Thick clients such as native mobile applications
etc.
There are several ways to develop and deploy Telemedicine Solutions.
Single page application
One of the simplest types of applications on the eHealth Infrastructure is to develop a single-page application.
The application may be a simple web server (delivering web content to the browser) delivering a single page to the browser.
The application may be hosted on the infrastructure.
The browser then requests data from the eHealth services and updates the single page based on the content returned from the eHealth services.
If no logic is needed then a simple application serving web content to a browser is perfect. E.g. just a simple web application hosting a single-page app based on Angular and typescript in the browser.
Applications using a BFF
The "Telemedicine Solution" is split into two
a front-end (UI) that serves as Singe-Page Application (SPA).
a backend/backend-for-frontend (BFF)
The Singe-Page Application is executed in the browser and requests data from backend-for-frontend, which provides an API optimized for the application.
BFF is a variation of the API gateway pattern. The BFF acts as a single entry point for the application and provides a single backend for all eHealth services,
The BFF may handle requests in one of several ways.
API gateway converts proprietary requests and responses to FHIR exposed by the Infrastructure
API gateway maintains data consistency across multiple services
API gateway handles other requests by fanning out to multiple services (orchestration/choreography)
Some requests are simply proxied/routed to the appropriate service.
….
Applications use FUT/KAM micro frontends
The clinical administrative application (CAA or KAM in Danish) is built as a micro-frontend application, meaning the KAM elements can be integrated into an application in the browser.
KAM has several services and endpoints which the browser can retrieve KAM components from. KAM consists of the following components:
common workplace - frame for the different micro-frontends
careteam micro-frontends
questionnaire editor micro-frontends,
the plan template editor micro-frontends and
pickers micro-frontends.
KAM elements are then put together in the browser. That is, the user will download an application consisting of five components, which will run in the browser and will send requests to the eHealth services
Server-side generation of the web pages
The Telemedicine Solution is hosted on the eHealth infrastructure and generates web pages on the server based on requests from the browser.
The browser requests data / new pages from the Telemedicine Solution. The application generates new pages on the server by requesting data from eHealth services.