Q. What healthcare standards are supported by Cisco® Application-Oriented Networking (AON) Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription?
A. Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription supports the following healthcare standards and document formats:
• Transformation, routing, and secure, reliable delivery of HIPAA X12 and National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) messages
• Routing and secure, reliable delivery of HL7 v2.x and 3.0 and DICOM messages
Q. What advantages does Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription provide over comparable solutions?
A. Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription is an integrated, purpose-built, hardware and software product designed specifically for centralized management, remote lights-out operation, enhanced security, scalability, and reliability. It reduces or eliminates the following tasks required for comparable software deployed on general-purpose servers:
• Initial installation, configuration, and ongoing maintenance of a general-purpose operating system and associated general-purpose server hardware
• Installation and maintenance of remote access software
• Manual distribution and deployment of software to remote systems both for initial installation and ongoing enhancements and upgrades
• Deployment and configuration of additional, complex infrastructure to facilitate high availability, redundancy, and failover
• Systems integration of hardware, software, and a general-purpose operating system provided by multiple vendors
Q. Which operating systems and corresponding file systems does Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription support?
A. The product currently supports remote file access through Network File System (NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS) on any operating system that can support either of these remote file systems.
Q. Can Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription currently support extracting/storing data to a database? If so, which database vendors and product versions are supported?
A. Yes. The product supports extraction of data from Oracle 9i (9.2), Oracle 10g, Sybase 12.5.1, and Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2003, and 2005 databases. Other Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)-compliant databases can be supported as needed through Advanced Services or by end customers or third parties utilizing the AON software development kit (SDK).
Q. What tools are available for developing or creating transformations, and how are transformations managed?
A. Cisco® AON provides transformation support through a number of mechanisms including XSLT, custom "parser packages," custom code, or third-party graphical mapping tools such as Contivo. See http://www.liaison.com/solutions/contivo/legacy.jsp for more information on the Contivo product.
Transformations generated by third-party tools such as Contivo are deployed to AON through the AON Management Console. They can then be selected through the Operations Management Console for Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription and applied to any document transfer either inbound or outbound.
Q. How are reliable delivery and data security implemented in Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription?
A. Cisco AON Healthcare Services Extension for HIPAA and ePrescription utilizes the Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) protocol to provide secure, reliable delivery of documents over the Internet. Reliable delivery is done through a combination of receipt confirmation through standard AS2 Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) and configurable retries on failure. Once a document has exceeded its retry count, it will generate a system error that can trigger an e-mail notification or Cisco® Unified Communications notification, and the document will be archived for future delivery.
Q. What is AS2, and can AS2 be used for HIPAA-compliant data exchange?
A. AS2 stands for Applicability Statement 2, an IETF standard (RFC #4130) for secure, reliable delivery of data and documents over the public Internet using digital certificates and encryption for security. See http://www.drummondgroup.com/html-v2/faq-hipaa-as2-p3.html for guidance on using AS2 to meet HIPAA requirements.
Q. Is auditing support provided for document delivery and receipt?
A. The product supports an audit database in which all data delivery events, both successful and unsuccessful, are recorded. In addition, digital signature support is provided for authentication of data as well as nonrepudiation of origin and receipt. All data is archived in its encrypted format and time-stamped for auditing purposes.
Q. What platforms support Cisco Application-Oriented Networking technology? Is Cisco AON also a standalone appliance?
A. Cisco AON is supported by the following Cisco router platforms:
• Cisco 2800, 3700, and 3800 Series Integrated Services Routers
To address situations where a platform footprint does not exist (for example, a Cisco 3800 Series Router is not in place) or organizational demarcation is required (for example network, application, or security devices), AON is also available on appliance form factors. Beginning with AON 3.0, Cisco AON will be available on the following Cisco appliance form factors:
• CADE-1010 Integrated Single-Core Appliance
• CADE-2142 Integrated Dual Quad-Core Appliance
Q. What are the benefits to deploying Cisco AON rather than a dedicated external device?
A. Cisco AON embeds message services within the network fabric to facilitate benefits that an external device cannot deliver. As the network is ubiquitous, services can be made available at any point in the network; services can be shared across multiple systems; security and policy management can be centralized; and management of distributed policies can be simplified.
Q. Will Cisco AON slow down the hardware?
A. No. Only the traffic flows that require Cisco AON processing are forwarded to the AON module. All other traffic is handled in the Cisco Express Forwarding forwarding path.
Q. Which version of software supports Cisco AON?
A. Cisco AON hardware is supported by the following software images:
A. These denote various elements of the Cisco AON solution, as follows:
• AMC: AON Management Console; AMC is used to control policy definition and management of the AON nodes from a central management console.
• AMA: AON Management Agent; AMA resides on the AON blade and is responsible for management communications between the AON blade and AMC.
• ADS: AON Development Studio; ADS is software that can be loaded on a Windows desktop and is used to design PEPs by combining bladelets that when applied to a particular application message enforce a particular business policy.
• SDK: Software development kit; A set of tools and documentation provided to help enable end customers and third-party developers to write and deploy software extensions for the AON platform.
• API: Application programming interface; helps enable end customers and third-party developers to extend AON functionality through standard, well-defined programmatic interfaces.
Q. Does Cisco AON support Java Message Service (JMS)?
A. Yes. AON supports JMS for multiple providers: Tibco EMS, BEA WebLogic JMS, Progress Sonic MQ, and IBM WebSphere MQ.
Q. Can the Cisco AON digital certificate authentication mechanism access certificates stored in Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)?
A. Yes. Cisco AON can retrieve client certificates from an LDAP directory and use them to authenticate a given transaction.
Q. Are Cisco AON adapters for MQ, EMS, and JMS certified by their vendors?
A. Yes. All Cisco AON embedded adapters have been sourced and licensed from their respective vendors.
Q. What is the high availability plan for the Cisco AON blade?
A. Cisco AON high availability and load balancing are based upon Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP) or external load balancers, and consequently all nodes are Active/Active.
Q. Does the Cisco initiative with nonstop forwarding/stateful switchover (NSF/SSO) capabilities apply to Cisco AON?
A. NSF and SSO add tremendous value to Cisco AON nodes that are embedded in NSF/SSO-capable devices. However, AON nodes do not share state between nodes for TCP or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)1 sessions due to the large amount of data that would require replication. However, for messages that have been processed, state sharing is supported to help ensure proper acknowledgment of messages.
Q. What is the impact of Cisco AON on network traffic?
A. Cisco AON nodes do not generate any traffic above that generated by message forwarding.
Q. Can Cisco AON modules be moved between chassis without restrictions due to serial numbers?
A. Yes. Each AON module's serial number is set in hardware at manufacturing time and is maintained across power cycles, so it is easy to move modules from one chassis to another.
This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit. For more details please visit the following website: http://www.openssl.org/.
