ITI and PCC Scope

The IHE IT Infrastructure and Patient Care Coordination domains have what appear to be overlapping scope statements.

PCC

IHE Patient Care Coordination (PCC) domain was established in July 2005 to deal with integration issues that cross providers, patient problems or time. It deals with general clinical care aspects such as document exchange, order processing, and coordination with other specialty domains. PCC also addresses workflows that are common to multiple specialty areas and the integration needs of specialty areas that do not have a separate domain within IHE.

ITI

The IT Infrastructure Domain supports profiles which supply the necessary infrastructure for sharing healthcare information. An infrastructure interoperability component represents a common IT function that is used as a building block for a variety of use cases... a necessary ingredient, but rarely visible to the end user!! These components may be imbedded in an application, but are often deployed as a shared resource within a RHIO or Health Information Exchange.

The question of where a profile proposal falls has come up several times, and the committee chairs met and agreed to several principles which will help to address this issue. These are described below:

1. When the principle use case is technology driven, it is an ITI Profile.
2. When the principle use case is clinically driven, it is a PCC Profile.
3. When the principle use case is operationally driven, it might be either, or in some cases both, and both committees will need to review to understand where it should land.
4. When the profile brings in new technology, transports, or messaging systems, ITI will need to be involved.
5. There may be a need (such as with RFD and QED), to split a proposal up into a part to be addressed by each committee. When possible, the ITI portion should be completed first, and the PCC portion second.
6. If there is a need to expedite a profile that requires participation from both domains, PCC and ITI will appoint co-authors of the profile who will be responsible for addressing nuances between both domains. One and only one committee will be responsible for publishing the profile.
7. PCC and ITI cochairs will review profile proposals for the other domain, to see if there are areas of overlap. These areas should be identified in advance of the planning meetings.
8. Each domain will reserve at least one hour in the second half of the planning meeting where PCC and ITI members can call in (if the meetings are not held at the same time and location) to discuss potential areas of overlap. Additional calls will be scheduled if needed after the planning meeting of both domains to finalize decisions.
9. Cochairs will continue to coordinate on any profiles where there may be overlap.
10. PCC and ITI will continue to try to hold meetings at the same time and location to facilitate communication between the two domains. We will reserve 1-2 hours during those meetings for cross-domain topics.