How has Spin evolved since the original formation of the Shared Pathology Informatics Network?
Spin has evolved into a general framework for constructing federated networks of data sources. Spin's core feature is data-agnostic support for broadcasting queries and aggregating results, allowing collections of data sources to be treated as a single conceptual unit.
The Spin framework provides a plugin architecture to support specific types and sources of data.
Do Spin networks use a peer-to-peer (P2P) topology or a hub-spoke topology?
Spin can support many network topologies, including peer-to-peer and hub-and-spoke. The same Spin node can be configured to participate at different points in different topologies simultaneously.
P2P models are often deployed when there are a limited number of institutions. A fully-meshed P2P topology has the advantage that no single institution is the "hub". This is beneficial for political reasons, and avoids a hub being a single point of failure. The downside is that more complex configuration is required.
Hub-and-spoke networks are commonly used when there are a larger number of institutions where each one trusts the others. Hub-and-spoke networks are simpler to configure, but create single points of failure - the hubs.
See Video Presentation by David Ortiz
Does Spin support searches for coded clinical data, free text medical notes, or other?
Spin has evolved from a pathology-specific utility to a generalized framework for query federation. Spin is data-agnostic, and consequently is not intended to support specific data types by default. However, applications written using Spin support querying for specific data types. For example: Coded clinical data can be searched using the SHRINE system, including Demographics, Diagnoses(ICD9),Medications(RxNorm) and Lab values. Medical free text can be searched using PSL and the Scrubber.