Web Service-Oriented Architecture for Pharmacy Management in Mobile Enviroments

Abstract

Ever-increasing demands for more efficient access to pharmacies on a 24x7 basis as well as rapidly growing needs for cost-effective pharmacy management systems have motivated research to develop new architecture that supports access of authorized users to pharmacy through both Web browsers and mobile devices. Our research1 has focused on development of a new Web serviceoriented architecture for pharmacy management systems in mobile environments. The new architecture allows access of authorized pharmacy system administrators, physicians, patients, and pharmacists to pharmacy through mobile devices as well as Web browsers. In this paper, we present our new Web service-oriented architecture. We have also developed a prototype of the pharmacy management system with the following key functions: prescription processing, medication knowledge-base management, pharmacy inventory management, and billing. In this paper, we also present the demonstration prototype that we have developed using the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) and J2EE-based Web services.