Item 11
IHE maintenance process.
Objective.
Describe the maintenance process of IHE for fixes to TF , the CP process. The maintenance process shall be transparent and efficient.
Analysis.
The IHE main publications, the IHE technical frameworks, are documents published by the IHE domain technical committees and reviewed by users (vendors or end users) during public comment periods. The technical framework are maintained on a yearly basis through two processes : addition of supplements (Supp) and submission of change proposals (CP). The submission of the comments is limited to the public comment period while the submission of CP is an ongoing process that can take place at any time. Indeed, the purpose of the CP is to fix errors in the documents.
The current process is erratic in the sense that it needs more transparency. It seems that some CP are not processed by the committees. Comments and CPs are submitted through mailing lists or the rsna forum. There is no acknowledgment of the submission of a CP or a comment. The voting process is unclear, who can vote, are votes taken into account ? Results of the ballot should be made public. There is a general feeling that comments that are not taken into account if no one is personnally defending it during the committee meeting. In addition there is probably a lack of clarity in the comment and CP that do not help the committee consider some of them. However, a feedback to the author about an unclear CP or comment could help the author to better document its next submissions.
In general we identify the following requirement :
- The maintenance process shall be documented and available on ihe.net
- Public Comment to a supplement shall be accepted for a period of 30 days after announcement unless otherwise specified.
- Public Comment and/or votes shall be submitted to a forum designated for that ballot
- Ballot, votes, and public comment period for ALL domains shall be announced on ihe.net as well as on the relevant mailing lists.
- Change Proposal shall be posted on a web space managed by the domain technical committee.
- Committee responses to Public Comment shall be posted to the same forum that accepted Public Comment. These responses shall be announced on ihe.net as well as on the relevant mailing lists.
It seems that the process of maintenance of the technical framework is not an IHE specific problem and that we could make use of the experience of SDO. It is mainly an organization and communication problem
Results.
Proposition of a maintenance process for the IHE Technical Frameworks. This probably needs to be changed taking advantage of the learning experience from HL7 and Dicom.
- Publication of a supplement
- Announce on ihe.net of public comment period or of next committee balloting session
- Gathering of comment and CPs on ihe.net forum
- Consolidate comments and CPs into single document
- Publication of consolidated Comments and CPs
- Ballot
- Publication of vote results and committee response.
Roadblocks.
This is not a European specific problem. The process shall be defined at the international level and shall be common to all domain.
This more work for the technical committees.
Work breakdown: Actions and organization and timing.
- Elaboration of a proposal of an organization for the management of CP
- Investigate tools that could be used
- Submission of the proposal to the different domain technical committees
- Gathered feedback from the different committees and revise the proposal accordingly