WebReach, Inc. Unveils Mirth - Healthcare Industry's First Open Source HL7 Messaging Middleware

WebReach, Inc., a leading healthcare IT consultancy and creator of open source Health IT solutions, today announced the open source release of Mirth 1.0. Mirth delivers the industry's first free, open source HL7 messaging middleware. The standards-based Mirth software is designed to dramatically reduce the time and cost required to achieve health information system interoperability and data exchange, and to speed secure information sharing across communities of healthcare professionals. Mirth delivers robust HL7 interface capabilities in an open source package, providing an alternative to costly proprietary and in-house systems.

Mirth is specifically designed to connect communities of healthcare professionals for exchange of patient-specific information, such as laboratory results and medical records. Mirth employs the widely accepted, standards-based HL7 messaging protocol, facilitating rapid, secure, and flexible deployment. It speeds the development of interfaces for secure exchange of data across formats -- for example, from XML to HL7 or vice versa -- reducing barriers to the formation of health information exchanges involving diverse information systems, and advancing initiatives aimed at improving patient safety and continuity of care.

"By releasing Mirth as open source software, we expect to see a user community quickly develop that includes HIT vendors, systems integrators, RHIOs, as well as IT staff working within healthcare institutions. Based on the hundreds of downloads of the alpha and beta version of Mirth completed already, we suspect there is significant pent up demand for this type of game-changing information application in healthcare," said Jon Teichrow, president and chief executive officer of WebReach, Mirth's creator.

Another breakthrough is the fully embeddable nature of the Mirth middleware. Mirth can be bundled directly into commercial or in-house clinical information systems, including electronic health record systems, eliminating the need to add expensive interface engines to these products in order to get them to exchange data with other systems.

The Java-based Mirth software levers other mature open source projects such as Mule, Jetty, HAPI, Axis, HSQLDB, and Rhino to provide a dependable, rapidly implementable HL7 interface engine with many of the features and capabilities of proprietary systems, but without the associated licensing cost.

The Mirth architecture also provides an open framework and repository for creating and sharing HL7 message transformers and adaptors, enabling those in the healthcare IT community to benefit from the work of others, and eliminating the redundancy inherent in current processes that require each organization to develop the "mappings" between systems. This community-based, open approach has been demonstrated to speed innovation in other industries -- and is now available for the first time in healthcare.

"Healthcare IT managers are not only under strict budgets, they are being challenged to develop new applications -- and modernize legacy applications -- to be interoperable with other healthcare systems," added Teichrow. "Mirth allows them to deliver on these demands with a standards-based, open source solution. Interoperability issues and budget constraints will pervade Healthcare IT for the foreseeable future and Mirth provides a sound and flexible option at minimal cost."

Key features available in Mirth 1.0 are:

* Easy-to-Use Configuration Tool: Mirth's graphical user interface makes

it easy to create, configure, maintain, and monitor messaging

interfaces.

* Multi-Protocol Source Connectors: LLP, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, JMS,

SSL, J2EE application and more. Mirth also connects to SOAP web

services.

* Custom, built-in, and sharable filters, transformers, and adaptors: map

data from incoming messages to variables, execute custom scripts on

message, construct HL7 messages from data sources, and run XLS

transformations on incoming HL7 or XML encoded messages. Mirth also

provides an open framework for creating and sharing these assets in the

OSS community.

* End-point connectivity: Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL,

PostgreSQL, and any database with JDBC connectivity.

* Security: SSL encryption for all network traffic and 3DES encryption

for Mirth's local message auditing sub-system.

"Mirth's ability to support multi-channel messaging modes, multi-protocol connectors, multiple languages for transformer scripting, and a full complement of end-point technologies make it an attractive interface engine for VistA-based solutions," said Joseph Dal Molin, Interim President, WorldVistA. "The Mirth Project team evaluated the VistA Office EHR initiative to ensure integration compatibility. The WorldVistA community will benefit from this open source complementary technology, and the sharing of interfaces, by helping make healthcare information technology easier to integrate, more affordable and accessible."

"Mirth is represented as freely distributable standards-based HIT messaging middleware and, as such, is in alignment with many of the goals of the National Health Information Network and NCHICA," said Holt Anderson, Executive Director of the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance. "Being an OSS HIT solution, Mirth removes cost and proprietary technology barriers, fosters the HIT community, and could provide a nexus for interoperability innovation. These attributes will help with the rapid acceleration and dissemination of healthcare information technology, which NCHICA strongly advocates."

"We turned to Mirth to provide our HL7 messaging subsystem when we developed our Radiology Information System, iRIS," said Phil Jackson, CTO of Chesapeake Medical Imaging. "Not only was Mirth easy to install and configure, the Mirth service engineers were with us every step of the way to make sure our implementation was successful. The Mirth support team from WebReach was extremely helpful, capable, and attentive to our needs."

The community release signals that Mirth's initial code base is functionally complete and ready for validation and utilization by the Health IT OSS community. "For Mirth 1.0, we reviewed existing messaging middleware products, assessed HL7 interoperability requirements from real-world use cases, and then developed a solution," said Teichrow. "We are now turning our focus to building the Mirth community, testing and proving the project in more applications, and incorporating feedback into the project roadmap."

Availability

Mirth is licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL 1.1) and is free to download and use for development and production deployments. The license also allows companies to embed and distribute Mirth free of charge. Mirth's zero-cost license ensures cost-effective deployment across as many systems and CPUs as business needs require, with no hidden costs. For more information about Mirth, please visit http://www.mirthproject.org.

Support and Services

WebReach, Inc. provides a full range of professional support, consulting, and integration engineering services for Mirth, delivered by the experts that created Mirth.

About WebReach, Inc.

Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Newport Beach, CA, WebReach serves some of the nation's largest and most respected healthcare organizations. WebReach delivers information technology consulting, hosts high availability secure applications, and designs user-driven health information solutions. WebReach software is used daily by thousands of health professionals across the U.S. to streamline care management processes, and to securely exchange health information. The Mirth Project is the first in a series of WebReach initiatives aimed at transforming health information technology by making high-value information technology utilities available to the healthcare community on an open source basis. For more information visit http://www.webreachinc.com.

Mirth and WebReach are trademarks of WebReach, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company or product names are for information purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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