New Directions Process

Background

In 2006 several profiles developed by the ITI committee missed the deadline for official connectathon testing. Since work on these profiles was of great interest and time critical for a community of interest they went forward within the "New Directions" section of HIMSS, a new area which has proved very valuable. The RFD (Request Form for Display) and PIX/PDQ V3 (HL7 V3 version of PIX/PDQ profile) profiles will be demonstrated as part of the New Directions section of HIMSS. For both of these initiatives a project manager was supplied by the community of interest (versus the normal process in which IHE supplies the project manager) and informal testing was supported during connectathon by the project manager. The project manager also organized and managed the demonstration of that profile within the New Directions section of the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase.

This process has proven very useful in cases where a profile is time critical but there may be a problem with perhaps the underlying standards, resource availability within IHE or a lack of real world experience with the standards being used or the problem being solved. In this case one might consider the effort a 2 or more year effort, where the first year is a prototype year, and the second year becomes a true trial implementation version.