FAQs

What is IHE?

„Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise“ (IHE) is a global not-for-profit initiative with regional and national branches. It provides a pragmatic methodology ensuring interoperability between healthcare IT systems resulting in a body of technical and semantic specifications, which are published by IHE as Technical Framework(s). IHE also organizes testing events worldwide to allow vendors to verify and validate their conformance with the IHE specifications. IHE is a joint initiative of users of healthcare IT systems and providers of such systems. IHE is governed by an international board that provides strategic direction and coordinates the technical development activities of IHE. In Europe, IHE is coordinated by IHE-Europe.

Why is IHE needed?

Standards are written to support a wide range of clinical processes and include many optional features. In order to obtain interoperability with regard to a specific clinical task, IHE creates profiles of the most relevant standards that make essential features for supporting the clinical task mandatory for those products for which conformance with a profile is claimed. IHE profiles specify the information that must be exchanged between systems and the actions that recipient systems must take on receipt of the information. However, they do not constrain the way in which systems are designed to enable ease of use.

What is the origin of IHE?

IHE was created in 1998 by users and industry in the US in order to respond to increasingly urgent issues of interoperability in the Radiology domain. The two user organizations RSNA (www.rsna.org) and HIMSS (www.himss.org) created a unique platform for users and vendors for defining specifications of healthcare IT systems that enable interoperability between complex applications. The concept of the IHE process was taken up in Europe as well as Asia shortly afterwards. European activities were started in the year 2000 by COCIR (www.cocir.org) and the European Society of Radiology – ESR (www.myesr.org). Because of the nature of the European healthcare environment, national IHE Initiatives have developed in a number of European countries. These initiatives coordinate their activities at the European level within the association IHE-Europe aisbl.

How does the IHE process work?

In the first stage of the IHE process, users define and select interoperability challenges, which have arisen in daily clinical work. A description of the clinical process involved is written carefully. Based on this written use case, vendors define technical specifications in the form of “Integration Profiles” which provide a solution to these interoperability challenges. An IHE profile includes a use case and the complete series of procedures made up of a number of individual steps. Profiles include detailed technical specifications for the use and implementation of relevant standards thus ensuring an uninterrupted flow of information between different healthcare IT applications in support of the specific use case. 

The profiles describe how healthcare IT systems can provide integrated support for a clearly defined workflow, each of which individually supports a clinical task within a specific clinical domain. IHE profiles can be used for a step-by-step implementation of systems in different domains and the gradual building of interoperable eHealth applications.

In the second stage of the IHE process, vendors implementing IHE profiles meet for an annual test event, the Connectathon. During the Connectathon, participating systems are connected through a physical network to create virtual healthcare enterprises. This is the basis for intensive tests among systems made by different suppliers based on IHE profiles. All tests are evaluated by independent monitors. For a system that has successfully passed all required tests, a vendor may issue an IHE Integration Statement.

A third stage is IHE Conformity Assessment. The IHE Conformity Assessment testing program is based on an ISO/IEC 17025 quality system in accordance with the IHE Conformity Assessment Scheme. A specific set of IHE profiles is available for testing in accordance with requests from project users and the industry. Products submitted must be either market-released products or expected to be released within six months after the Conformity Assessment test session. To engage in Conformity Assessment testing, the vendor must have passed the IHE Connectathon tests within the prior two years for the appropriate IHE profiles targeted for Conformity Assessment. The accredited testing laboratory, authorized by IHE International, will deliver the Conformity Assessment Report that is published on the IHE International website after successful completion of testing. 

What is “interoperability”?

According to ISO/IEC 2382-01, Information Technology Vocabulary, Fundamental Terms, interoperability is defined as follows: „The capability to communicate, execute programs, or transfer data among various functional units in a manner that requires the user to have little or no knowledge of the unique characteristics of those units”. For IHE, IT systems are interoperable if they can properly exchange clearly defined sets of relevant information in the context of a specific clinical situation and perform appropriate actions as described by the IHE specifications.

Does IHE address sharing of health information?

The main goal of IHE is to achieve interoperability between healthcare IT applications and devices. In doing so, IHE also addresses the issue of the exchange of medical records between different applications and different health and healthcare environments. As IHE considers health data exchange in the context of the workflow of the sending and receiving systems/organizations, it has developed different profiles that are suited for use within hospital departments, others across entire hospitals, others at the regional or national level, others for home health, others for mobile environments. Attention for consistency across those environments ensures that these profiles can be easily combined and support national eHealth strategies. IHE provides these interoperability building blocks that have been designed so that they can be arranged in a variety of ways or architectures depending on the eHealth deployment constraints.

How does IHE support the discussion between users and vendors?

IHE profiles summarize the actual state of knowledge regarding technical and other issues affecting the clinical process in question. They contain relevant definitions that enhance understanding among users and vendors. This helps users and vendors to reach a common understanding concerning requested services and functionalities quickly, even if they have not been involved in the development of the profile. In this way, IHE facilitates the discussion between users and vendors about the interoperability goals and content of specific IT projects.

Finally, IHE helps to protect previous investment in existing IT systems. IHE opens a way to upgrade existing systems, when necessary, and integrate such systems with new applications from a different provider. This reduces the need to replace existing and working IT systems just because a new application is being introduced in one department of the healthcare enterprise.

What is the role of users?

The strength of IHE comes from the direct involvement of users in the process of profile development. Users are instrumental in defining the interoperability challenges that need to be addressed. This user involvement ensures that profiles address real-world problems in a way that users recognize as helpful. Because of this pragmatic approach, IHE profiles find acceptance with users and are implemented quickly. IHE provides users and vendors with a communication platform for defining relevant profiles including their technical specifications and testing to ensure interoperability between various systems.

What are the IHE Domains and what is the Annual Work Cycle?

IHE is organized across a growing number of clinical and infrastructure domains, such as Cardiology, Laboratory and Pathology, Public Health, Radiology, Patient Care Coordination, IT Infrastructure, just to name a few. Each domain produces its own set of Technical Framework documents, in close coordination with other IHE domains. Committees in each domain review and republish these documents annually, often expanding with supplements that define new profiles. Initially, each profile is published for public comment. After the comments received are addressed, the revised profile is republished for trial implementation: that is, for use in the IHE implementation testing process. If criteria for successful testing are achieved, the profile is published as final text and incorporated. More information can be found here: http://www.ihe.net/Profiles.

How long does it take to develop a solution to a user problem?

IHE follows an 18-month cycle from the definition of an interoperability challenge to the publication of a related profile. To achieve that, users and vendors within IHE may agree to break up a larger problem into separate tasks. Work on these individual tasks will then be performed on a step-by-step basis. This way of working ensures that solutions to interoperability challenges become quickly available, even if the underlying challenge is of an extremely complex nature.

For which clinical areas does IHE provide profiles?

IHE covers a number of different clinical domains such as Cardiology, Laboratory and Radiology and also horizontal domains such as IT infrastructure and cross-clinical domains Patient Care Coordination, including primary care. The areas of application are constantly evolving based on the needs of users. Profiles can be focused on integration, clinical content, workflow, security and privacy. An up-to-date list can be found on www.ihe.net/Profiles.

What is IHE Conformity Assessment? What are its benefits?

Medical information details often provide crucial facts needed for optimal healthcare, whether within a hospital, across regional health IT projects, within national networks, or from a hospital to the patient at home. It is critical that vendors and users work together, along with regulatory authorities and standards bodies, to ensure that products, systems and solutions interoperate together to bring quality solutions to the market that perform as they should and result in best-quality patient care. 

To reduce costs, delays and other risks of inadequate purchases of products, users and vendors have come to depend on trusted, independent third-party testing offered by IHE Conformity Assessment:
Give confidence to the end user that a current/potential supplier has independent proof of the interoperability of their products.
Reduce testing and integration efforts for large eHealth projects by specifying and procuring products that have been conformity-assessed. They can focus their testing investment on the specifics of the project.
Rely on an accredited testing laboratory to validate products before they are installed in an organization or facility, reducing risks and deployment costs.
Improve patient outcome through better and more consistent product quality.
Gain global market credibility by distinguishing the company and its products. For a listing of companies and products, please visit: http://conformity.ihe.net/summary-reports. 

What is the content of an Integration Profile?

A given profile for integration, or security, or privacy will define relevant activities in the context of the workflow of the use case in question. Communication of information is described in terms of “transactions” between “actors.” An actor is implemented as part of a computer application. All relevant transactions between actors that are required to complete the workflow (clinical task) are clearly specified. The specifications describe how specific parts of standards are to be used and provide technical guidance for the computer application implementation. Some profiles for content will cover primarily data structure and terminology-coded concepts suitable to convey the clinical information for a specific type of information exchange (e.g. provide a summary, a clinical diagnosis report etc.).

What is the role of standards within IHE?

IHE’s primary goal is not to develop base standards, but to standardize the adoption of the most common used base standards in healthcare, health IT and in the digital web. The role of IHE is to enable interoperability of healthcare IT applications and health devices through an open and transparent process, which can easily be implemented. Therefore, the resulting profiles are based on existing standards that are already used in the relevant healthcare environment. HL7 (www.hl7.org), DICOM (www.dicomstandard.org), IETF (www.ietf.org) and W3C (www.w3c.org) are examples of such existing and widely accepted standards, tailored for specific use cases by IHE profiles. 
IHE profiles specify how appropriate parts of the standards in question must be used so that relevant data can be transmitted from one application to another application within the context of a clearly defined workflow process. In the IHE process, it is not required, and in many cases not even possible, that the complete IHE profile refers only to a single standard. Indeed, most IHE profiles specify the precise way to combine the use of several base standards.   

How does IHE verify conformance at the Connectathon?

The Connectathon is a week-long test meeting. During that meeting, all participating healthcare IT systems are connected through a physical network. The Connectathon creates a virtual healthcare enterprise equipped with healthcare IT applications and devices from different vendors that provide various solutions for a range of different tasks as they are encountered in a real-life hospital or community. The correct implementation of the specifications of the profiles is verified through a number of tests consisting of the direct exchange of data according to the requirements of the profile between the actual systems identified as actors in the profile. All tests are monitored and verified by independent (user side) experts recruited for that specific week based on their knowledge and experience. The experience from the Connectathon is also used to further improve the correctness and clarity of the specifications in the profiles.
When a product implementation has been successfully tested against three or more counterparts participating in the Connectathon, the technology developers are identified as part of the official Connectathon results published on the IHE website for public reference (https://connectathon-results.ihe.net). This supplier would then issue a so-called IHE Integration Statement on the IHE Product Registry (https://www.ihe.net/IHE_Product_Registry), expressing its commitment to IHE profile compliance.

Is IHE promoting openness?

Yes, as a not-for-profit initiative, IHE publishes the profiles and releases its testing tools for free. Users of IHE-compliant healthcare IT applications procure IHE conformant products in the usual way. 

Can I use any IHE intellectual property for free? 

IHE profiles and the IHE testing tools can always be freely used by everyone. However, rules for the protection of intellectual property rights do apply (e.g. logos, trademarks) and the use of any IHE intellectual property is restricted to “fair use”. 

How much time do I have to complete the course?

Your access is valid for 6 weeks after purchase.

Can I get a preview of the course?

You can see some sample material (videos, questions etc.) here …….

Can I start the course anytime?

Yes, you can start the course whenever you want to.