HealthManagement, Volume 6 - Issue 5, 2006
There are four new integration profiles in trial implementation in the radiology domain in 2006:
1. Nuclear Medicine Image Integration Profile (NMI) with Cardiac Option is a change to the NM Image Profile, improving functionality for nuclear medicine cardiac image viewing.
2. Image Fusion (FUS) Integration Profile specifies communications between systems, creating and registering image sets and systems displaying fused images.
3. Import Reconciliation Workflow (IRWF) Integration Profile specifies how data importers obtain local demographics, coerce patient and procedure attribute values in the imported data and report progress/status of the importation process.
4. Mammography Image (MAMMO) Integration Profile specifies how DICOM Mammography images and evidence objects are created, exchanged and used. It describes how Acquisition Modalities transfer Full Field Digital Mammography (FFDM) images, how CAD systems act as Evidence Creators, and how Image Displays should retrieve and make use of images and CAD results.
From the IT infrastructure domain, there are two integration profiles which are particularly interesting to an imaging manager:
1. Cross-enterprise Document Media Interchange (XDM): provides document interchange using a common file and directory structure over several standard media. This allows the patient to use physical media to carry medical documents. This also enables healthcare providers to use person-to-person email to convey medical documents.
2. Cross-enterprise Document Reliable Interchange (XDR): focuses on providing a standards-based specification for managing the interchange of documents that healthcare enterprises have decided to explicitly exchange using a reliable point-to-point network communication. It is a natural complement to the IHE ITI XDS Integration Profile (for cross-enterprise document sharing) when a sharing infrastructure (repositories and registry) is not needed.
These new integration profiles will be tested during the European Connect-athon next Spring. During the last few months, IHE-Europe has defined a new governance model, which will reinforce its involvement in the development of new profiles, beyond its key role in laboratory and pathology. Based on a close cooperation with COCIR IT and INRIA, it will also consolidate the credibility of IHE, recently referred to in the European Commission report "Connected Health, Quality and Safety for European Citizens”.
IHE Europe is also proud to announce the election of its new user co-chair Karima Bourquard. Karima Bourquard who is with the GMSIH and is also acting as IHE-F user co-chair, succeeds Prof. Berthold Wein of Aachen. Peter Kuenecke, Siemens is now fully in charge of the vendor co-chair position. The position was shared with Emmanuel Cordonnier of Etiam over the last year. IHE- Europe is grateful to Berthold Wein and Emmanuel Cordonnier for all the time and energy they spent in promoting the initiative in Europe and defending European interests in the technical committees.
