Design and implementation of a Portal for the medical equipment market: MEDICOM

Palamas, S; Kalivas, D; Panou-Diamandi, O; Zeelenberg, C; Van Nimwegen, C

dc.contributor.author	Palamas, S	en
dc.contributor.author	Kalivas, D	en
dc.contributor.author	Panou-Diamandi, O	en
dc.contributor.author	Zeelenberg, C	en
dc.contributor.author	Van Nimwegen, C	en
dc.date.accessioned	2014-03-01T01:16:17Z
dc.date.available	2014-03-01T01:16:17Z
dc.date.issued	2001	en
dc.identifier.issn	1438-8871	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://dspace.lib.ntua.gr/xmlui/handle/123456789/14013
dc.relation.uri	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-3242685337&partnerID=40&md5=1437fcf6deea356b011a33597c72a390	en
dc.relation.uri	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-3242685337&partnerID=40&md5=1437fcf6deea356b011a33597c72a390	en
dc.subject	CORBA	en
dc.subject	Electronic commerce	en
dc.subject	Equipment and supplies	en
dc.subject	Internet	en
dc.subject	Medical devices	en
dc.subject	RDBMS	en
dc.subject	XML	en
dc.subject.classification	Health Care Sciences & Services	en
dc.subject.classification	Medical Informatics	en
dc.subject.other	article	en
dc.subject.other	biomedical engineering	en
dc.subject.other	commercial phenomena	en
dc.subject.other	computer program	en
dc.subject.other	consumer	en
dc.subject.other	data base	en
dc.subject.other	device	en
dc.subject.other	electronics industry	en
dc.subject.other	health care delivery	en
dc.subject.other	health care organization	en
dc.subject.other	health care personnel	en
dc.subject.other	health care quality	en
dc.subject.other	market	en
dc.subject.other	medical instrumentation	en
dc.subject.other	medical technology	en
dc.subject.other	process design	en
dc.subject.other	process development	en
dc.title	Design and implementation of a Portal for the medical equipment market: MEDICOM	en
heal.type	journalArticle	en
heal.identifier.secondary	e32	en
heal.language	English	en
heal.publicationDate	2001	en
heal.abstract	Background: The MEDICOM (Medical Products Electronic Commerce) Portal provides the electronic means for medical-equipment manufacturers to communicate online with their customers while supporting the Purchasing Process and Post Market Surveillance. The Portal offers a powerful Internet-based search tool for finding medical products and manufacturers. Its main advantage is the fast, reliable and up-to-date retrieval of information while eliminating all unrelated content that a general-purpose search engine would retrieve. The Universal Medical Device Nomenclature System (UMDNS) registers all products. The Portal accepts end-user requests and generates a list of results containing text descriptions of devices, UMDNS attribute values, and links to manufacturer Web pages and online catalogues for access to more-detailed information. Device short descriptions are provided by the corresponding manufacturer. The Portal offers technical support for integration of the manufacturers' Web sites with itself. The network of the Portal and the connected manufacturers' sites is called the MEDICOM system. Objective: To establish an environment hosting all the interactions of consumers (health care organizations and professionals) and providers (manufacturers, distributors, and resellers of medical devices). Methods: The Portal provides the end-user interface, implements system management, and supports database compatibility. The Portal hosts information about the whole MEDICOM system (Common Database) and summarized descriptions of medical devices (Short Description Database); the manufacturers' servers present extended descriptions. The Portal provides end-user profiling and registration, an efficient product-searching mechanism, bulletin boards, links to on-line libraries and standards, on-line information for the MEDICOM system, and special messages or advertisements from manufacturers. Platform independence and interoperability characterize the system design. Relational Database Management Systems are used for the system's databases. The end-user interface is implemented using HTML, Javascript, Java applets, and XML documents. Communication between the Portal and the manufacturers' servers is implemented using a CORBA interface. Remote administration of the Portal is enabled by dynamically-generated HTML interfaces based on XML documents. A representative group of users evaluated the system. The aim of the evaluation was validation of the usability of all of MEDICOM's functionality. The evaluation procedure was based on ISO/IEC 9126 Information technology - Software product evaluation - Quality characteristics and guidelines for their use. Results: The overall user evaluation of the MEDICOM system was very positive. The MEDICOM system was characterized as an innovative concept that brings significant added value to medical-equipment commerce. Conclusions: The eventual benefits of the MEDICOM system are (a) establishment of a worldwide-accessible marketplace between manufacturers and health care professionals that provides up-to-date and high-quality product information in an easy and friendly way and (b) enhancement of the efficiency of marketing procedures and after-sales support.	en
heal.publisher	JOURNAL MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH	en
heal.journalName	Journal of Medical Internet Research	en
dc.identifier.isi	ISI:000207624600004	en
dc.identifier.volume	3	en
dc.identifier.issue	4	en
dc.identifier.spage	88	en
dc.identifier.epage	100	en