Application of web services architecture to information system for coordination of kidney transplantation

Cooperation Supporting System (CSS) is a project with one goal of prevailing importance: to improve information exchange between all participants of the kidney transplantation process. The project designed for the Regional Dialysis and Transplantation Centre in N. Copernicus Hospital in Łódź is carried on by the Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering team of Institute of Computer Science. Since kidney transplantation engages many institutions, quick and effective flow of information plays a key role in the whole process. Given the current state of the system and the new concepts of its development, we decided to restructure the communication layer of the system. The present paper discusses how this change influences the overall system design, capabilities of the system, possibilities of future enhancements as well as possible integration with other information systems. To this purpose, the Web Services standard is presented and a brief overview of the evolution of distributed computing technologies is also given.