Recruitment Brochure

IHE: Technology for Optimal Care

What is IHE? - Puzzle Piece Brochure

Optimal patient care requires efficient, secure access to comprehensive electronic health records (EHRs). Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) accelerates the adoption of EHRs by improving communication among healthcare information systems.

Convening HIT Stakeholders for Effective Work

IHE brings together users and developers of healthcare information technology (HIT)--domain experts from many different areas of care. They engage in an annually recurring process that has four steps:

1. Define critical use cases for information sharing.
2. Create detailed technical specifications for standards-based communication between systems to address these use cases.
3. Industry implements these specifications--called IHE Profiles--in HIT products.
4. Testing of these systems takes place at well supervised and recorded events.

Vendors may also take part in public demonstrations of their IHE capabilities at medical meetings. They can publish detailed, accessible information about the capabilities they build into commercial HIT products.

Integration Profiles: A Framework for Interoperability

IHE Profiles provide a standards-based framework for sharing health information among authorized care providers within a given care setting and across networks of such sites. In developing each profile, clinicians and IT experts work to identify critical interoperability issues in information access, clinical workflow, administration and underlying infrastructure. Each profile defines in detail the actors, transactions and information required to address the relevant use case, referencing appropriate standards. Profiles are compiled into IHE Technical Frameworks, detailed technical documents freely available online at http://www.ihe.net/technical_framework/.

Domain Committees: Meeting Critical Interoperability Needs

Committees in 10 IHE domains work in annual cycles to develop and maintain the IHE Technical Frameworks. They identify critical clinical interoperability use cases and define how to use established information standards to address them. Clinical and technical domain experts are invited to take part in these committees. More information is available at http://www.ihe.net/domains/ or by contacting the domain secretary at secretary@ihe.net.

Connectathons: Testing Interoperability and Conformance

IHE has more than a decade of experience in testing the interoperability of healthcare IT systems. Vendors implement IHE integration profiles in their products and test them at IHE Connectathons, supervised testing events making use of testing software developed over held annually in locations worldwide. The sponsoring organizations of IHE publish the results of testing in an online database at [Need url of product registry.] Companies can also create IHE Integration Statements to publicize the integration capabilities of their commercial products.

More than 250 vendors worldwide have implemented and tested products with IHE capabilities. Further information about IHE Connectathons is available at http://www.ihe.net/connectathon/ or by contacting testing@ihe.net.

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Supporting Health Information Networks Worldwide

Carefully implemented interoperability standards are the foundation of the EHR and health information exchanges being established in local, regional and national networks around the world. IHE profiles are in use supporting health information networks in Canada, U.S.A, several European countries, Japan and China. In the U.S.A they have been selected by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to address priority use cases and accepted by the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the procurement of healthcare IT systems by the Federal Government.

"IHE, more than any other single organization, has paved the way for practical interoperability." - Wes Rishel, Gartner, Inc.

"IHE is dedicated to meeting global demands for improved healthcare quality, cost effectiveness and safety by accelerating the
availability of integrated and interoperable systems." - Elliott Sloane, PhD, Assistant Professor Department of 
Decision and Information Technologies, Villanova School of Business, Villanova University

• Advanced testing tools

IHE Outcomes Improved access to medical information

• safety
• quality
• efficiency
• privacy/security?

Recruitment Pitch IHE invites knowledgeable experts from the user and vendor communities to join its domain committees and participate in the current cycle of profile development. Participants have the opportunity to influence the direction of standards adoption for sharing medical information and improving care. The currently active domains are:

• Anatomic Pathology
• Eye Care
• IT Infrastructure
• Laboratory
• Patient Care Coordination
• Patient Care Devices
• Quality, Research and Public Health
• Radiation Oncology
• Radiology

Information on the work of the committees is available on each domain's Wiki page: http://wiki.ihe.net/index.php?

All committees are open to participants. Stakeholders interested in participating or learning more should contact the committee secretaries listed there.

• How to become a Member ORG
• List of current member orgs
• Sponsors -- Need Web page
• National/Regional Orgs -- Need Web page

Tools for Implementers

Testing Process for Vendors

Marketing and Communications Committee