Profile Proposal Process

Announce Call for Profile Proposals

Keeping in mind that the mission of IHE Domains is to meet the global needs of their Domain, this is an important opportunity for the IHE Regions to influence the development process. Domains should do their best to solicit input from the Regional and National IHE Initiatives.

The call should be mailed to:

• the domain Planning and Technical Committee mailing lists
• the Domain Coordination Committee mailing list so domain cochairs can forward the call to their committees if appropriate
• the Regional Cochairs mailing list so cochairs can forward the call

The call should be mailed at least 30 days before the deadline to allow other cochairs to put the topic on their agendas.

An example Call for Profile Proposals is here.

Select Short List

• Submitter prepares a Brief Proposal using the wiki template or the Word template which details:
  • The current problem or currently unmet need
  • How it should work
  • A potential standard that might be applicable

• Planning Committee reviews Brief Proposals and selects a short-list of proposals for further consideration
• Proposals that don't make the cut may be resubmitted in later years

Perform Technical Evaluation

• Submitter prepares a Detailed Proposal using the wiki Detailed Proposal Template (or if you just want the delta from the Brief Proposal, use the Delta Proposal Template) or alternatively the Word templatewhich adds:
  • A more detailed use-case of the desired behavior
  • More details on relevant standards
  • A sketch proposal of what the IHE Supplement might include (new profile? new transactions? new actors?)
  • A list of potential risks (what might hang up development or implementation of such a supplement) to be managed
  • If possible, an estimate of the "business case" for addressing the problem

• Planning Committee send Detailed Proposals to the Technical Committee

• Technical Committee evaluates the Detailed Proposals, specifically filling in the sections for:
  • Estimate of Profile Development Effort & Product Implementation Effort
    • Proposal Effort Evaluation describes a Story Point approach targeting Effort/Complexity/Uncertainty
  • Candidate Editor
  • Likely development resources (who's going to help write) and information sources (who's going to tell us how it should work)
  • Clarifications and recommendations regarding scope of profile
  • General work budget including profile development and TF maintenance (CPs, editorial work, etc.)
  • Answers to Planning Committee questions
  • May participate jointly with Planning Committee in selection of Profiles and Profile slates for development

• The updated Detailed Proposal is returned to the Planning Committee

Final Profile Selection

• Planning Committee meets/votes to select Proposals for the next cycle
  • Consider voting on collections of proposals rather than individual proposals
    • Some combinations make logical groups of work, e.g. due to efficiency, risk balancing, load balancing, etc.
    • For examples of this "slate" approach, see here, here and here.
  • This is also a good time to consider IHE Pipeline Impedence Matching.
    • If almost all of your profiles are in wide clinical use, you are an amazing Domain.
    • If you see a step in the Pipeline that seems to be a bottleneck with a large number of profiles backed up, consider pumping fewer new profiles into the start of the pipeline and use the left over effort to work on clearing the bottleneck.
• Planning Committee announces selected Proposals