PCC TF-1/About
About the Patient Care Coordination Integration Profiles
IHE Integration Profiles offer a common language that healthcare professionals and vendors can use to discuss integration needs of healthcare enterprises and the integration capabilities of information systems in precise terms. Integration Profiles specify implementations of standards that are designed to meet identified clinical needs. They enable users and vendors to state which IHE capabilities they require or provide, by reference to the detailed specifications of the IHE Patient Care Coordination Technical Framework.
Integration profiles are defined in terms of IHE Actors, transactions and their content. Actors (listed in PCC TF-1: Appendix A) are information systems or components of information systems that produce, manage, or act on information associated with clinical and operational activities. Transactions (listed in PCC TF-1: Appendix B) are interactions between actors that communicate the required information through standards-based messages. Content is what is exchanged in these transactions, and are defined by Content Profiles.
Vendor products support an Integration Profile by implementing the appropriate actor(s) and transactions. A given product may implement more than one actor and more than one integration profile.
Content Profiles define how the content used in a transaction is structured. Each transaction is viewed as having two components, a payload, which is the bulk of the information being carried, and metadata that describes that payload. The binding of the Content to an IHE transaction specifies how this payload influences the metadata of the transaction. Content modules within the Content Profile then define the payloads. Content modules are transaction neutral, in that what they describe is independent of the transaction in which they are used, whereas content bindings explain how the payload influences the transaction metadata.
The figure below shows the relations between the Content Integration Profiles of the Patient Care Coordination Domain.
