The best network architecture for RHIOs

There's been considerable debate about what’s the best network architecture for RHIOs (regional health information organizations), including whether it should be centralized or decentralized (federated)?

We argue the best approach is a federated “node-to-node mesh” architecture because it can incorporate all other architectures and meets these RHIO business needs:

• Has maximum reliability
• Is the least expensive to deploy
• Is the most robust since there is no single point of failure
  Has unlimited scalability
• Promotes shared governance, while it supports rapid decision making at the level of the individual
• Provides early detection and correction of healthcare errors when and where they occur
• Enables patient profile data to be linked with RFID, thereby supporting information exchange in both IT-competent organizations and paper-based ones.

We discuss this issue on a new page in our wellness wiki at http://wellness.wikispaces.com/Network+Architectures