IHERO 2008-08-01 Minutes

IHE-RO Planning Committee, Friday, August 1, 2008 at 8:00 – 4:00 PM (CDT)

Attendees: Malcolm Wright, Colin Field, John Sarafa, Richard Popple, May Wahab, Bruce Curran, Adam Earwicker, Firas Mourtada, Edward Wu, Kevin Albuquerque, Charles Able, Mike Bieda, Sha Chang, Zhe Chen, Phillip Devlin, Andy Fuller, Shankar Giri, Tommy Koons, Mika Miettinen, Jatinder Palta, Jaap Pijpelink, Tony Quang, Ramesh Rengan, Stuart Swerdloff, Prabhakar Tripuraneni, Virgil Willcut, Sunita Ranjitkar

I. Administrative Items

• The Agenda was approved.
• Minutes from March 20, May 22 & July 3, 2008 were approved.

II. IHE Introduction

• Mr. Curran explained the current structure of IHE. The international board is includes representatives from each domain. There are currently nine domains. A National/Regional Committee is formed in order to address regional and country-specific issues and deployment.
• The committee discussed that the connectathon is a once a year event which may be rotated in different countries each year.
• An Oncology Domain application is still pending. ASTRO and ASCO will be the primary sponsors of this domain under which radiation oncology will be a sub-domain. ASCO has indicated that they will not be ready until 2009 to take part on the oncology domain. The committee discussed developing a patient chart that will be equally useful for the medical oncology and radiation oncology.

III. IHE-RO Introduction

• Dr. Tripuraneni explained how IHE-RO has been successful in bringing all vendors together and working on this common goal. He also addressed a need of increasing the pace of developing integration profiles on one hand and on the other hand educating big corporations that will fund this kind of effort.
• The committee discussed the importance of users demanding IHE-RO compatible equipment to vendors.
• The ASTRO Board advised to seek guidance from the Corporate Advisory Council on the funding issues. Dr. Palta suggested giving a private demonstration tour to the ASTRO Board members during the ASTRO Annual Meeting and showing them the two profiles that have been accomplished so far.

IV. Membership

• Organizations and corporations are the members of IHE. Every member of IHE is entitled to appoint one primary member and one or more alternates to each IHE committee. ASTRO as a member can appoint only one member who can vote to this IHE-RO Planning Committee. Bruce suggested creating an IHE taskforce within ASTRO and nominating one representative to the planning committee and one to the technical committee.
• All members should attend meetings regularly. If one does not attend three consecutive meetings, that member will lose Voting Privileges until he/she attends two consecutive meetings. The IHE International Governance document identifies different categories of IHE membership available for professional societies, medical centers, vendors and other organizations to join IHE.

V. Integration Profile

• The committee discussed that end users do not know exactly what they should be asking to vendors regarding IHE-RO compatibility. The committee explored the ways to educate the end users.
• The committee discussed the importance of identifying the clinically relevant profiles. The profile 1 is not clinical relevant, however, profile 2 and 3 have started to be more clinical relevant.
• When a milestone is hit for a clinical relevant profile there should be an aggressive marketing effort to let people know what that profile means and how they incorporate it into purchasing decision.
• The committee discussed the importance of vendor statement after the connectathon.
• The members are asked to enter use cases directly on the wiki or submit to Mika Miettinen, Bruce Curran or Colin Field.

VI. IHE-RO Future Budget

• The committee reviewed the draft budget.

VII. Communication with other Organization

• Presidents/representatives of national and international societies will be invited to attend the IHE-RO Taskforce meeting during the ASTRO Annual Meeting. The focus of this meeting will be to educate them on IHE-RO and its financial situation.

VIII. 2008 Public Demonstration

• Mr. Miettinen will prepare a presentation for the public demonstration. Members who are interested to give presentation during the public demonstration should send their availability to Mr. Miettinen. There will be four presentations and two demonstrations per day. On Saturday, demo presentation will be done after completion of the booth construction.

IX. Action Items

1.Add an enforceable time limit for product availability after the connectathon (e.g. 6 months).

• And report results of this experiment to the Domain Coordination Committee

2.Collaboration with industry to develop beta sites for testing of products. The goal is to increase interest & publications to increase awareness of IHERO projects.

• And report results of this experiment to the Domain Coordination Committee

3.Develop a current list of products that are IHERO-compatible and request that the companies report the release of such products.

• Consider coordinating with the IHE Testing and Tools who has prototyped a database to maintain a current list of products that are IHE-compatible based on companies submitting entries when they release such products.

4.Develop Brachytherapy and Proton use cases (Dr. Mourtada)

5.Awareness & support of IHERO within other groups: AAPM (Mr. Curran), JASTRO-ESTRO- RANZCR- Latin American Oncology Groups ( Dr. Palta & Tripuraneni at ASTRO), Organizations within China (Dr. Chang), local radiology societies (each within their group, e.g. Dr. Wahab for Florida). Also, obtain formal statements from these organizations.

6.Address corporate financial issues: Mr. Curran to prepare a proposal of 4-5 points to address financial issues e.g. adding a separate “sponsorship” fee & increasing the connectathon fee. Mr. Curran will ask about similar fees that organizations pay to the radiology IHE.

• Organizations in IHE Rad pay fees to participate in IHE Connectathon and IHE Demonstrations. There are no fees for being a member of IHE, participating in IHE Committees or using the IHE Technical Frameworks.

7.Exploring possible government/private sources of funding.

8.White paper (Dr. Wahab & Dr. Rengan) and pamphlet development (Dr. Wahab)

X. Future Meetings

• IHE-RO Planning Committee Meeting - Monday, September 22, 2008 at 12:00-2:00 PM EDT (ASTRO Annual Meeting - Stone Room of the Westin Waterfront Hotel)
• IHE-RO Technical Committee Meeting - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 7:00 – 9:00 AM EDT (ASTRO Annual Meeting – Commonwealth A/B Room of the Westin Waterfront Hotel)