What is CCOW?

The Clinical Object Content Workgroup (CCOW) is an organisation that provides guidelines for communication across visual (GUI-based) applications for healthcare providers. CCOW supports secure, unfailing retrieval of patient data, as the context manager coordinates patients with their respective medical records from disparate applications. Healthcare centres typically have multiple applications to store and handle patient data, and with CCOW, the context management system synchronises all the various sources to act as a single interface.

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The vendor-independent HL7 CCOW standard uses context management to share data across disparate healthcare applications at the point of care. CCOW synchronises the various applications so that a clinician can access the same clinical information, whether it is the same patient, user, test, or appointment.  

How can I be CCOW compliant?

CCOW compliance depends upon compatibility, and we now need to match the theoretical know-how with the ins and outs of a practical solution. For data exchange within a mixed-mode architecture, a context sharing session needs to be able to include non-CCOW-compliant applications.

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Although HL7 adopted CCOW standards in 1998, most applications do not fully support CCOW, and some are entirely non-compliant. As a result, it is essential to include these partial and non-CCOW-compliant applications for comprehensive integration of a desktop healthcare IT suite. A context manager must enable CCOW compliance across all three applications for seamless communication in the context sharing session.

CCOW compliance within mixed-mode architecture

A system of mixed-mode architecture can include three possible types of applications:

           • Application with a CCOW based context API

           • Application with a proprietary context API

           • Application without a context API

Typical applications in each category include Cerner Millennium and Epic for CCOW compliant applications, Sectra IDS7 for non-CCOW compliant applications with API, and Open EMR for non-CCOW compliant applications without context API.

HL7 CCOW standards and newer mappings

A thoroughgoing context management system will comply with HL7 CCOW standards in addition to newer developments. Here is a list of some recent mappings:

           • CCOW Component Object Model (COM)

           • CCOW JSON over HTTP(S)

           • CCOW URLENCODED over HTTP(S)

           • CCOW JSON over WebSockets

           • CCOW encrypted PROTOBUF/gRPC

We invite you to get in touch with us today, where we’ll discuss your best plan to be CCOW compliant.