System and user interface supporting context sharing between concurrently operating applications

A system for use in healthcare for managing conveying executable application context information between concurrently operable executable applications, comprising:

• an authorization processor for determining a user is authorized to access information of a particular patient;
• and
• a central managing application responsive to user authorization, for providing centralized services to a parent and child application to coordinate operation of said parent and child application comprising participant applications of a session including by conveying session context information including a patient identifier from said parent application to said child application via communication without requiring child or parent application embedded programming capability to alter and share said context information, in response to a user activating said child application via said parent application, said central managing application coordinating operation of said parent and child application by using a plurality of different message data formats conveying bidirectional command and response data communicated between an application and the managing application, said plurality of different message data formats being for retrieving session context data from the managing application and for,
• (a) initiating a session of user operation,
• (b) terminating a session of user operation and
• (c) conveying session context information including said patient identifier, a session identifier and personal record parameters.

A method for use in healthcare for managing conveying executable application context information between concurrently operable executable applications, comprising the activities of:

• determining a user is authorized to access information of a particular patient;
• initiating generation of a session identifier particular to a user initiated session and for use by a plurality of concurrently operating applications to uniquely identify said user initiated session;
• and
• in response to user authorization, providing centralized services to a parent and child application to coordinate operation of said parent and child application comprising participant applications of a session including by conveying session context information including a patient identifier and session identifier from said parent application to said child application via communication without requiring child or parent application embedded programming capability to share context information in response to a user activating said child application via said parent application, said central managing application coordinating operation of said parent and child application by using a plurality of different message data formats conveying bidirectional command and response data communicated between an application and the managing application, said plurality of different message data formats being for retrieving session context data from the managing application and for,
• (a) initiating a session of user operation,
• (b) terminating a session of user operation and
• (c) conveying session context information including said patient identifier, said session identifier and personal record parameters.

A CCOW (Clinical Context Object Workgroup) standard compliant system for use in healthcare for managing conveying executable application context information between concurrently operable executable applications, comprising:

• an authorization processor for determining a user is authorized to access information of a particular patient;
• and
• a central managing application responsive to user authorization, for providing centralized services to a parent and child application comprising participant applications of a session to coordinate operation of said parent and child application compliant with the CCOW (Clinical Context Object Workgroup) standard including by conveying session context information including a patient identifier from said parent application to said child application via communication without requiring child or parent application embedded programming capability to share context information in response to a user activating said child application via said parent application, said central managing application coordinating operation of said parent and child application by using a plurality of different message data formats conveying bidirectional command and response data communicated between an application and the managing application, said plurality of different message data formats being for retrieving session context data from the managing application and for,
• (a) initiating a session of user operation,
• (b) terminating a session of user operation and
• (c) conveying session context information including said patient identifier, a session identifier and personal record parameters.