IHEIntegrating the Healthcare Enterprise

What it is

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way health IT systems share information. It promotes the coordinated use of established standards, such as DICOM and HL7, to address specific clinical needs. Its legal entity is IHE International, Incorporated, a non-profit organization incorporated in the State of Illinois (USA). It has more than 100 member organizations: professional societies, government agencies, provider organizations, technology companies and others.

IHE began in 1998, when HIMSS and RSNA decided to work together to improve integration between imaging and information systems. Its first successes were in radiology.

How it works

IHE follows an annual four-step cycle:

1. Clinical and technical experts define critical use cases.
2. Technical experts write detailed specifications, the profiles, which select and optimize existing standards.
3. Industry implements those profiles in its products.
4. IHE tests the systems at supervised events called Connectathons.

Each profile defines actors (the role of each system), transactions and content. Profiles are compiled into freely available Technical Frameworks. The work is organized in domains, such as IT infrastructure, radiology, patient care coordination, pathology and laboratory medicine, cardiology or pharmacy, and in national and regional deployment committees.

Common misconceptions

• IHE is not a standard. It is the organization that publishes profiles based on other bodies' standards.
• "IHE compatible" means nothing in a tender. You need to name the profile, the actor and the options, for example "XDS.b, Document Consumer actor".
• An IHE Integration Statement is published by the vendor itself; it is not a certification.
• Testing at a Connectathon is not a product certification either. IHE has a separate conformity assessment program.