ITI Planning Co-Chair Role

Activities during the year...

Call for input to all IHE International members and national/regional committee for new work requests for ITI. This was done informally, and should be added to the process steps. Suggested data: issue the call in July, deadline for submissions October 10th.

Planning meeting in November, starting the cycle. This is a refresh -- bringing in new market information, and high-level requests for new work and changes/additions to current work. The input documents are brief proposals for profiles (per the template). The output is a decision about what work items to present to the ITI Technical Committee, and that will also cause proposal authors to prepare more detailed proposals. It is important that the people who are advocating for ITI activities be present at this meeting, as we've found that lack of face-to-face presence will cause a proposal to fall to a lower priority.

The initial Technical Committee meeting in December. This is where the technical aspects detailed proposals are discussed, and sometimes re-cast. The results is a statement of work sent back to the Planning Committee for approval. The Planning co-chair's chief job in this meeting is to ensure that what is discussed is consistent with Planning's intent, e.g., nothing is added or changed that is inconsistent.

The second planning meeting occurs via t-con of F2F in January. This is where the Technical Committee's results are presented and approved, perhaps with some tweaks.

The final planning meeting occurs at the HIMSS conference. This is the public roll-out of the next year's plan.

Attendance at the Technical Committee meetings in mid-March, mid-to-late May, and mid-late July is optional, unless scope issues require Planning Committee review/decisions.

The vendor conference in June is and educational event, intended to inform and recruit vendors to participate in the Connectathon and public demos (RSNA, HIMSS, ACC). I've also found it to be a good place for face-to-face meeting and recruiting people for the next planning cycle.

The HIMSS Interoperability Showcase planning committee begins its work in July. All IHE Planning co-chairs should be part of this, taking on specific assignments.

The HIMSS/ACC participant's conference in October is where vendors get down to technical detail understanding. It kicks-off the work toward the Connectathon and demos. While attendance is optional, I've found it to be a good place for face-to-face meeting and recruiting people for the next planning cycle.