Articles
Why Should Radiologists Care about IT Standards and Interoperability?
Prof. Dr. Peter Mildenberger, former User Co-Chair of IHE-Europe has recently written a lead article for the renowned journal HealthManagement.org.
Put Simply - without standards and profiles there is no interoperability!
Something that is essential not only in healthcare in general but in particular in Radiology where a wide variety of systems need to communicate with each other. Where the use of IHE Profiles provides manufacturers with the detailed requirements and expectations they must meet and deliver to the user’s satisfaction, in the knowledge that they have hence complied with the appropriate standards. Involvement of users – Radiologists – is therefore essential to continued, successful delivery of interoperable solutions and improved patient care.
Read full article here.
Exclusive interview with Annatina Foppa, Deputy Head of eHealth Suisse
Appointed in May 2021 to Deputy Head of eHealth Suisse, the Swiss Competence and Coordination Centre of the Confederation (State) and the Cantons in Switzerland and one of the co-hosts of the IHE-Europe Connectathon Week 2022 in Montreux, Annatina Foppa has a comprehensive background in standards having graduated in Philosophy of Science and Physics with her thesis on ‘Standards in Measurement’.
Exclusive Interview with IHE Specialist and Monitor Robert Breas
The IHE-Europe Connectathon, or testing marathon, provides valuable experience to vendors thanks to the support of IHE Monitors. Let’s introduce you to Robert Breas who has been present as a Monitor for more than 10 years at IHE-Europe Connectathons.
Importance of Projectathons
IHE as an international profiling organisation defines interoperability specifications called “IHE Profiles” that answer the needs of clinicians collected in Use Cases. IHE Profiles constitute the building blocks of the interoperability framework that applies to the healthcare project. IHE Profiles can be extended considering local laws, rules and other specificities identified by the project at the local level. Extensions to IHE Profiles emerge with the need to verify the correct implementation of these new constraints within products, sometimes with formal recognition.
mHealth: Joint recommendations for an effective deployment.
COCIR and IHE-Europe have worked closely with other key stakeholders to recommend the inclusion of use cases to demonstrate how utilising IHE Profiles improves the interoperability of mHealth solutions.
New Testing Tools on Gazelle Testing Platform
IHE offers a set of tools to help developers of Health IT Systems implement IHE Profiles and also prepare for Connectathons. These tools have been developed by many organisations across the globe.
Brussels face to face Connectathon transformed to ONLINE, 2-6 November
After thorough consideration and evaluation of the current COVID-19 developments, we are urged to announce that the 2020 IHE-Europe Connectathon scheduled to take place on November 2-6 in Brussels, Belgium will be taking place online. IHE’s globally-developed, standards-based, open-source interoperability testing platform together with experienced monitors will support the testing event.
The interest of XDS and XDM IHE profiles for sharing documents and images
Charles PARISOT is chair of IHE-Services Committee. He had been the chair of the IT infrastructure committee at the time those profiles were developed.
Tie Tjee is IHE Netherland vendor chair. The Netherlands would like to speed up the interconnection between regions and among them some have implemented XDS infrastructures. This has raised several questions about the use of XDS with XDM profile in the context of imaging.
IHE Europe update on the Coronavirus
Since our last update the COVID-19 outbreak is rapidly evolving and more and more governments and organizations have decided to place travel restrictions outside and inside Europe to slow down the virus spread and prevent infections.
This naturally impacts the attendance from the vendors, hospitals, government bodies and other parties and we therefore deem not to reach the intended impact and purpose of the event anymore. But most importantly is the safety, health and well-being of our participants and attendees which will always be the highest priority.
This is a “Force majeure” situation and it changed even more dramatically since yesterday as the Belgium government, in order to protect the public health, now recommends to avoid indoor meetings in general. The current prognosis is directing into further escalation of that respect within the next weeks.
This postponement applies to all events that were scheduled during the Connectathon Week:
- IHE-Europe Connectathon testing
- IHE World Summit
- Belgium eHealth Interoperability Day
- mHealth Plugathon
- Training “IHE Profiles for medical device interoperability”
- IHE Belgium Terminology Day
All these events will now take place at the same venue Autoworld, Brussels, the week of November 2-6, 2020.
More information on the events at the new date will follow soon.
We truly regret this situation and apologize for any inconvenience the postponement might cause and trust your understanding on our decision.
We are looking forward to making a great event in November together with you all.
XDS metadata for exchange medical documents and images guideline
A taskforce of 9 European countries worked together to deliver an "XDS metadata for exchange medical documents and images guideline" with the goals of sharing experiences on XDS implementation in European countries;
Sharing views on how the metadata are used (use cases, terminologies, data and finding a common way to harmonize the metadata, building an implementation guide for those wanting to implement XDS metadata in future projects.
It’s important to have one voice for all European countries
What is the importance of this cooperation?
IHE-Netherlands interviewed Peter Mildenberger, User Co-Chair of IHE-Europe, about IHE's role in Europe. Click here for the whole article.
epsos CASE STUDY
Goal for the epSOS eHealth Project:
“to develop a practical eHealth framework and ICT infrastructure [based on existing national infrastructures] that will enable secure access to patient health information, particularly with respect to a basic patient summary and e-Prescription, between European health care systems”