Standards Selection Process

Selecting appropriate standards for a profile should go through 3 stages: Exploration, evaluation and selection.

Exploration

The Technical Committee should explore the standards landscape, including not just the usual suspects (e.g., HL7 and DICOM), but other possible standards for potential candidates. It should include in its exploration the standards identified during the profile development phase.

Evaluation

The Technical committee evaluates the standards for the following characteristics:

• Publication Status - Is it now, or likely to be by time of publication, an approved standard?
• Suitability for Use Case - Is it designed for the function that it is being used in the use case?
• Aligned with existing work - Is the standards compatible with those selected in other IHE profiles?
• Deployed - Has the standard actually been used?
• Widely Available - Are implementations of the standard sufficiently available to expect that it could be used in a product?
• No Encumbrances - Is the standard free from significant encumbrances on its use? This is not about whether the standard is free, but rather whether implementing it would require prohibitively expensive licences to use.

Consensus

The Technical Committee comes to consensus on the proposal, voting only as necessary