ICP Foundation Level

Introductionary remarks / Document Status

This is a workgroup draft that already had some review cycles. The intention of this "Certified Professional - IHE Foundations Exam" is to provide a "beginner" "general purpose" profile that a large number of individuals may acquire. The intent is for the certification testing to be closed book using an online testing process.

This may then be extended upon e.g the ICP Document Sharing. These will likely be tested open book exams and assessment of prior knowledge and experience.

We first need to understand the idea of ICPs and how modular ICP profiles may address the user needs.

Business Outcomes

The business outcomes describe how a ICP Foundation typically contributes to activities in the healthcare enterprise

Target audience/prerequisite skills for a ICP Foundation: a person with a health IT background with a requirement to use IHEs products, either someone (contracted) to work for a healthcare provider organization, or someone employed by a software development company.

A competent ICP Foundation will be able to apply the IHE methodology (ISO/TR 28380) to develop interoperability specifications for an existing healthcare environment, and will have the skills to identify and use the appropriate existing IHE profiles when faced with a healthcare interoperability project.

At a more detailed level, a competent ICP Foundation will be able to:

1. IHE Methodology
   • explain the concepts and organisational structure of IHE to teams
     • explain the process of the Connectathon
     • contribute to IHE profile development by submitting "Change Proposals", e.g. if new requirements arise, or if they find an issue in an existing profile
   • capture the interoperability requirements of users in healthcare and formulate specifications using the IHE profile development methodology (ISO/TR 28380).
     • identify components in existing IT systems that conform to IHE profiles
2. IHE Technical Frameworks and Profiles
   • capture the interoperability requirements of users in healthcare and formulate specifications using existing IHE profiles.
     • conceptualise the use of additional IHE profiles, in existing IT systems, in order to support additional workflows.
     • explain and identify upcoming IHE profiles that are still in development
     • together with legal and administrative experts conceptualise how specific regulatory requirements can be addressed using existing IHE security and privacy profiles
   • assess the available IHE and base standard related skills within a team, identify gaps, provide guidance on how missing knowledge can be acquired
   • help resolve specific issues of IHE conformance e.g during procurement, development or maintenance
     • capture interoperability issues that arise during implementation and help to answer them using IHE resources and contacts
     • perform a market analysis of products and vendors regarding conformance to IHE profiles using the IHE Connectathon results database

Learning Outcomes

The following levels of learning outcomes are used, in the order of complexity:

• reproduce and explain
• apply and implement
• analyse and develop

All of these learning outcomes will be tested as part of the certification process.

A competent ICP Foundation should be able to:

1. IHE Methodology
   • understand the main concepts of IHE (actors, transactions,...), the document structure of IHE technical frameworks.
   • understand the structure and processes of IHE especially for developing the technical frameworks
   • understand the structure, processes and tooling of IHE for testing at the Connectathon
   • understand and generate integration statements
   • understand and explains IHE International Conformity Assessment
   • explain the IHE domains and the Governance of IHE
   • research information from IHE sources: IHE homepage, Wiki, FTP
   • conduct simple and advanced browsing in the CAT results matrix and product registry
2. IHE Example profiles, base standards, general healthcare IT knowledge
   • understand and explain base standards such as XML, JASON
   • understand and explain the basic concepts of IHE base standards: HL7V2.X, HL7V3/CDA, DICOM, OASIS, IETF, HL7FHIR
   • understand and explain the basic concepts of terminologies, ontologies, coding systems and value sets used in the IHE, specifically LOINC, SnomedCT, ICD and HL7 tables.
   • understand and explain the basics of Security : CIA-Triad, encryption, digital signatures, certificates, consents, authorization models, policies, federated identity management.
   • understand an apply the 'top 20 most often implemented profiles' (as determined by looking at CAT statistics)
     • A draft list of ranked profiles is available, as well as a description of the method how this list was created and ranked
   • be aware of the existence and scope of all other profiles
3. Accelerate Health Information Exchange deployment
   • understand the Interoperability Use Case deployment methodology offered by IHE-Services
   • understand largescale deployment testing strategies with Projectathons and deployed systems on-boarding
   • understand the role of Gazelle, IHE interoperability testing platform and its deployment (IHE-Services)

Related Groups

IHE Education Committee

SIIM Certified Imaging Informatics Professional - IHE Radiology has contacts IHE can consult with about their program