Devices

Mission Statement

Advancing interoperability from home to hospital to lay the foundation for innovation and furthering health knowledge and state-of-the-art healthcare internationally.

Mission Implementation

Goals:

Support emergence of IoT and Big Data analytics that have an insatiable hunger for massive, granular sensor and device data.

Provide real-world evidence to both develop and validate next generation health technologies and protocols.

Engage industry to guide development, implementation and conformance assessment and interoperability of personal and clinical apps and devices.

Objectives:

Outline Business Cases that communicate to key stakeholders the value of IHE solutions in return on investment or in meeting national / regional healthcare objectives and obligations.

Develop Use Cases describing specific processes and realization scenarios that can be employed to achieve business case objectives.

Create profiles that provide a convenient, reliable way of specifying a level of compliance to popular standards sufficient to achieve truly efficient interoperability.

Develop technical communications marketing content to create demand for IHE solutions.

History

The Devices Domain (DEV) was created in 2019 as an expansion of the original Patient Care Device Domain (PCD). Along with regulated Patient Care Device, DEV now includes Personal Connected Health (PCH) and the Device Point-of-Care Interoperability (DPi). These three groups are mostly autonomous Programs with the Devices Domain.

DEV Programs

The Devices Domain consists of three programs addressing different clinical needs and use models.

• The IHE Patient Care Device Program promotes the integration of medical devices into the healthcare enterprise, from the point-of-care to the EHR, potentially resulting in significant improvements in patient safety and quality of care. The focus is on exchanging information from vital signs, physiological monitors, ventilators, infusion pumps, and anesthesia workstations with enterprise applications such as clinical information systems.

• The IHE Personal Connected Health Program promotes the development of IHE Profiles for remote health and fitness monitoring in support of consumer-centered approach to improving their health and wellness. PCH Profiles provide guidance for implementing globally recognized standards that enable collection and sharing of massive amounts of medical-grade personal health data.

• The IHE Device Point-of-Care Interoperability Program promotes TBD.

For further information on each Program, please go to the appropriate wiki page:

• Device Point of Care Interoperability (DPi)
• IHE Patient Care Device (PCD)
• Personal Connected Health (PCH)

Sponsors

Each Program has its own sponsors.

For Patient Care Device (PCD), the sponsors are:

• American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE),
• Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and
• Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI).

For Personal Connected Health (PCH), the sponsor is:

• Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA)

For Device Point-of-Care Interoperability (DPi), the sponsor is:

• OR.NET - SDC Initiatives

Committees

The Devices Guidance Committee is responsible for providing for consistent processes only where practical across Programs and promoting effective communication and coordination among them. Participating in this committee is one of the duties of the Co-Chairs of IHE Devices Program committees. A key objective of the Devices Guidance Committee is to allow maximum autonomy of operations for each Program, encouraging coordination at the domain level only as necessary to ensure compliance with the IHE Principles of Governance or to clearly benefit from economies of scale.

The Devices Guidance Committee consists of representatives from each Program’s Planning and Technical Committees.

Additionally, each Program has its own Planning and Technical Committees

• PCD Planning Committee
• PCD Technical Committee

• PCH Combined Planning & Technical Committee

• DPi Planning Committees -
• DPi Technical Committee -

Additionally, each Program may have working groups or task forces for specialty applications/implementations within their area.

Committee and Working Group meeting schedule is at: DEV meeting info

Market Opportunity Analysis

A Market Opportunity Analysis demonstrates a thorough understanding of the market to be served by IHE, the conditions of that market, and that the business is viable considering those conditions. By way of example, this would include:

• A survey, characterization and common understanding of the specific global industry that IHE wishes to impact.
• Further characterization of this industry specific to regions or countries.
• Markets and market segments targeted or to be targeted by IHE.
• The key players (stakeholders / companies) serving these markets.
• Products and services of they offer.
• Critical gaps that can be filled by IHE.

Business Case Development

The DEV Domain develops solid business cases essential in justifying the undertaking of a project and attracting investment, participation and adoption of the product or service. The justification changes as both producers and consumers traverse the technology adoption life cycle curve. Innovators are technologists that value new products that offer orders-of-magnitude improvements over existing solutions. Early Adopters are not technologists but appreciate the benefits of a new technology in more broad terms to their company. Early Majority are ultimately driven by the practical application of new technology with measurable improvements over existing products or services. By way of example, these improvements may be quantified in the form of profitability or improvements to the human condition. Winning over this segment is fundamental to mainstream adoption.

Business cases may be developed at the Domain or Program level depending on the intended scope and available resources.

Use Case Development

The DEV Domain develops Use Cases describing a business process or specific behavior in which the product or service can be employed to achieve business case objectives. A clear mapping between a use case and viable business case is essential in demonstrating how the product or service is of value to the stakeholder.

An effective Use Case will articulate the primary stakeholder calling for the product or service, scope of the system providing the product or service, all stakeholders and their interests, preconditions, minimal guarantees, success guarantees, main success scenario, and extensions (i.e. branch use cases).

Use cases may be developed at the Domain or Program level depending on the intended scope and available resources.

Technical Marketing Communications

MARCOM, or Marketing Communications, is the targeted interaction with prospective customers using one or more media. Technical Marketing Communications creates demand for technology products and services by promoting features and benefits that require the communication of knowledge or actions. Participants in the Devices Domain create the technical content for the marketing effort and work with MARCOM specialists to communicate that content to the target market.

Collaboration Platform

The Devices Domain and Programs are working to converge on a common set of tools to facilitate collaboration among participants. A combination of wiki, google docs, and Causeway are currently in use. It is envisioned that IHE will be moving to the Atlassian tool set. Confluence will be the collaboration tool of choice. To that end, the Devices Domain will adopt accordingly.

Membership Recruitment

IHE International is made up of member organizations that are stakeholders in improving the interoperability of health information systems. As IHE Devices Domain expands to include personal connected health devices & apps and high acuity point-of-care devices, new members with the requisite expertise will be essential to ensure IHE profiles are developed to meet their relevant interests.

Domain participants are encouraged to seek out additional members in order to allow the development and release of profiles most relevant to the healthcare industry.

Global Synergies

The Devices Domain actively engages with a number of Standards Development Organizations and other industry groups to ensure alignment between their standards and specifications and IHE profiles that implement those standards in uniform fashion essential to interoperability. IHE has established formal liaison relationships with:

• TBD

Profiles

One line descriptions of the profiles (final text and trial implementation) published by the domain, as well as links to the more detailed descriptions on the Wiki and to the Technical Framework pages. PCD Profiles are listed in each Sub-Domain’s wiki page:

• PCD - PCD Profiles

• PCH -

• DPi -

Contact

To learn more about the Devices Domain, please contact the Domain Secretary at dev@ihe.net

Domains

Domain Coordination Committee