Updated: Feb 1, 97
HELIOS II

Project Code:   A2015 Project value:   2231 KECU EC contribution:   1650 KECU No of partners:   7 No of countries:   5 Duration:   36 months

Contact: Prof. Patrice Degoulet Hosp. Univ. Broussais Informatique Medicale 96 Rue Didot F-75674 Paris, France Tel.: +33-1-43.95.91.66 Fax: +33-1-43.95.92.09 E-mail: degoulet@hbroussais.fr helios@hbroussais.fr

Overview

Purpose and objectives

The objectives of HELIOS-II were to develop a fully integrated medical software engineering environment supporting analysis, design and implementation of medical applications and to use this platform for building significant parts of a multimedia medical workstation. The project gave special attention to both object-oriented approaches and software re-usability that are considered crucial steps towards the developments of more reliable and coherent medical applications. HELIOS-II relies on existing international standards. In addition the project may directly contribute to the development of standards of communication and cooperation between medical software components.

HELIOS-II may be viewed as a layer above a distributed operating system providing services both to application engineers (analysers, designers, developers) and to medical application end-users. Its architecture consists of three main parts, the Bus, the Kernel and the Services.

l) The HELIOS Unification Bus is the backbone of the entire SEE. It is both a communication channel and a complete integration framework based on a "plug-in" mechanism that makes it easy to add or remove components.

2) The Kernel consists of a set of strongly interconnected components required for the basic system functions. The Object-oriented Information System is the central module that serves as data and knowledge repository both when applications are being developed and executed. The Analysis Design and Development Environment covers the different phases of the software life cycle using an object-oriented approach. The Interface Management System and the Multimedia Manager gather the tools needed for the development of efficient and user-friendly interfaces.

3) The Services are an open set of medical oriented components which may be plugged into the system according to the needs of medical applications being developed. The Image Related Services include both basic imaging tools for the collection, integration and handling of medical images, and more advanced support for image analysis, 3D reconstruction and interpretation. The Natural Language Processor allows medical texts to be analysed and their representations to be stored in the Information System and queried when needed. The Decision Support System, relying on Medical Logic Modules provides a mechanism for data-driven decision support, evoked by the execution of triggers in the Information System. The Medical Documentation Facility uses an hypertext/hypermedia approach to organise the consultation of medical knowledge and information resources. The Medical Connection Service. thanks to close compliance with medical communication standards, allows applications created with the environment to be easily integrated into broader clinical systems.

Results

HELIOS-II was organised around two cycles. At the end of the first cycle, in October 1992, a first prototype version of the different components was made available. The specification of the unification bus was available for the community and served as a contribution for connection of potential medical software components. A style guide for application development, to be sued in conjunction with the HELIOS environment was also available. The second cycle ending in December 1993 allowed incremental development and validation of the results achieved during the first cycle. An extended HELIOS-II version and significant parts of a pilot Ward Information System were produced at the end of the third year.

HELIOS-II improves developers' productivity and reduces development costs, allows applications to be distributed in heterogeneous environments and facilitates the integration of current and future technological advances.

HELIOS-II constitutes an open platform for other European projects thanks to strict compliance to international standards. It provides all the documented time and cost savings of object technology's modular programming and re-usable components, freeing developers to devote more time to tailor their applications to the end-users needs: (physicians. nurses, secretaries, etc.) and ultimately delivering tools more adapted to patients' care.

Comprehensive descriptions of the HELIOS-II framework and its software components is available as a special issue of Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine CMPBEK 45 (Supl I) Sl-Sl52 (1994). Descriptive information about HELIOS and the different user manuals of the software components, are available on the Internet in two HELIOS World Wide Web servers (http://www.cmd.uu.se/ and http://mbi.dkfzheidelberg.de/helios/.)

The HELIOS Unification Bus is publicly available on the Internet to foster collaboration with other projects and research groups.

List of Deliverables

Year 1

• Global design, version 0 (3/S/I)
• Detailed design, version 0 (6/S/R)
• Integration meeting report (11/R/I)

Year 2

• General report including evaluation of efforts within EEC (2/P/I)
• Environment prototype (2/P/I)
• End of first cycle meeting report (8/R/I)
• Implementation of HELIOS-2 version 0 (10/P/R)
• Implementation of the WIS kernel prototype (10/P/R)
• HELIOS-2 user manual version 0 (10/R/I)
• Global and detailed design version 1 (12/S/I)

Year 3

• General report including evaluation of efforts within EEC (2/R/P)
• Implementation of HELIOS-2 version 1 (10/P/R)
• HELIOS-2 user manuel version 1 (10/R/R)
• Implementation of the WIS kernel version 1 (12/P/R)
• Final report (12/R/P)