Get Involved ... in IHE-Europe

To achieve its purpose, IHE-Europe supports, promotes and facilitates the use of products that implement IHE Integration Profiles through means such as educational activities, success stories, and integration statements. IHE-Europe also supports national-level IHE activities in order to incorporate national requirements into interoperability requirements and live demonstrations of interoperability at the national level in Europe.

You can become involved with IHE-Europe in three areas :

• Supporting Activities
• Participating in Events
• Working with a Committee

Supporting Activities

IHE-Europe activities include development, documentation and deployment of standards-based solutions to address specific clinical and operational integration needs for information technologies in healthcare.

Development activities require defining and documenting solutions called Integration Profiles that are then detailed the IHE Technical Frameworks. The definition and development of solutions is based upon user requirements and are intended to make workflows in healthcare operations more efficient and less expensive.

Once solutions are developed, IHE-Europe helps develop testing software (MESA tools) required to support vendors in building interoperability into the design of products.

The work of developing these solutions is organized into distinct domains, according to departmental and disciplinary boundaries typical in healthcare. Domains in which IHE committee activities are ongoing or planned include: Cardiology

Information technology (IT) infrastructure, Laboratory, Pharmacy and medication management, Radiology, Radiation Therapy, Oncology.

Domain-specific Planning and Technical Committees perform this work with oversight and support from sponsoring and cooperating organizations.

Deployment Activities

To foster the implementation of IHE Integration Profiles, IHE-Europe supports a process of interoperability testing, demonstrations, education and promotion. Continually evolving and growing, these deployment activities are generally performed at the national or regional level and are typically domain-specific in scope.

National and regional IHE initiatives coordinate the deployment of the IHE Technical Framework and Integration Profiles and give input to their development relevant to local needs and issues. They are sponsored and overseen by relevant national/regional professional associations and include membership and staff of these groups as well as local hospital and vendor representatives.

To bring together and assure coordination of Europe's national and regional deployments, IHE-Europe works in a collaborative way to promotes and supports the annual European Connectathon, a one week connectivity session among products from different vendors.

At the 2008 European Connectathon held at St. Catherine's College at Oxford, England, 83 vendors from different healthcare domains, such as radiology, clinical lab, or patient administration, participated with over 300 engineers. To become involved in IHE-Europe, identify your interest either by a specific domain of healthcare or a particular country. Then contact the IHE-Europe Secretariat to find where you can best apply your interest.