These guidelines are intended to provide a baseline set of Match-Connect administration practices for all Match-Connect participants. Due to the critical nature of business operations facilitated via Match-Connect, it is expected that these guidelines will be followed closely and consistently. This should ensure the ongoing success of message exchange between Match-Connect partners.
- The Match-Connect system architecture is based on privacy and security by design principles. Deviation from these principles has to be justified, documented and approved. Typically, a trade-off has to be made between privacy/security and overall system complexity.
- A Match-Connect administrator should respond to all Match-Connect-related inquiries within 24 hours (excluding weekends), regardless of the content of the inquiry.
- Inquiries that reference system problems (for example, problems with sending/receipt of messages) should be given high priority.
- Sufficient time and care should be devoted to development and testing when establishing a connection with Match-Connect. Close collaboration is often necessary between new Match-Connect partners and WMDA to ensure that business and system expectations are being adequately met on all sides, before exchanging Match-Connect messages in production environments.
If a new Match-Connect partner does not want to implement the whole set of available message types, reasonable groups of message types should be implemented together. (tbd: reasonable sets of messages, aka known as EMDIS implementation level.
- Generally faxes and emails should be avoided in an electronic communication system. If they become necessary, it’s recommended not to mix channels in message groups, for example, if the TYP_REQ was in Match-Connect, the result should be in Match-Connect as well and not by fax/email (and vice versa).
The implementation of the central part of the Match-Connect architecture (broker, central hub) is based on these principles
- not storing any data or meta-data of Match-Connect participants after retrieval by the receiving hub
- not changing any data (payload) of Match-Connect messages
- ensure integrity and traceability of the messages exchanged (for details see Chapter 6.0).
(Moved from chapter 6) The Match Connect system acts as a central broker of information exchange between registries participating in the Match Connect ecosystem, also called central hub from here on. The central hub bears responsibility to:
- Route information from the sending registry to the receiving registry and maintain information integrity
- Provide meta information to aid in the investigation of message failures or data synchronization problems
- Provide meta information for traceability
- Ensure integrity of the data in the Search & Match Service
- Perform syntactic validation of the information (e.g. appropriate information structure, allowable values, valid dates, etc)
- Validate the data for fields which are contained in the Search & Match Service and update these accordingly. This applies to
- Patient data, in particular HLA
In performing these duties, the Match Connect system will inspect the contents of messages to determine who to route messages to and to perform basic validation. This content is not intended to be reviewed by administrators of the system except in cases of investigating message failures or data synchronization problems. Original message contents will never be modified by the central system but additional meta information "blocks" will be added to ensure the receiving registry is aware of:
- What registry sent the information
- What type of information is contained
- A message identifier
- A timestamp
- Any failed validations detected by the Match Connect system
To Consider For Documentation: