A new record, announced this year's Connectathon (CAT) initiative of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) in Pisa: More than 75 companies and institutions from across Europe have been given proof of the viability of the IHE integration profiles of their systems in 2,200 tests. Also, the Bochum image management expert VISUS participated on the 11th European IHE Connectathon.
"Due to the large number of tests, this year we were on site with four systems and 14 specialists from our development site. In addition to a diagnostic workstation and a mammography workstation also two PACS server came into operation," says technical director Klaus Kleber. "Overall, we were able to perform successfully with more than 300 JiveX interface tests with other systems." We tested the systems in five domains, including radiology, cardiology, and IT infrastructure. "The steadily increasing number of participants reflects the growing importance of interoperability of IT systems," Kleber points out.
At this year's IHE Connectathon the focus of VISUS was on storage, retrieval and visualization as well as consistent representation in CT, ECG, and mammography and the exchange of image data with XDS-I (Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging), XDS (Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing) and XDR (Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange). There were also the mapping of more complex operations and creating and importing CDs from patients.
IHE is an initiative of doctors, administrators, IT industry experts and organizations such as RSNA, HIMSS and various X-ray companies. Originally formed in the U.S. in 1998, IHE initiatives have now established in Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Norway and Japan. "The initiative is committed to improving the technical exchange of information between different IT systems in medicine," says Kleber. The data exchange is based on the established standards of DICOM and HL7 and applies them in a process view.
