Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) achievements, expansion in new clinical domains and deployment

In 1998, the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) founded the “Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise” (IHE) initiative with the goal to increase the pace of non-proprietary integration of information systems for typical multi-vendor settings. Representatives of healthcare providers, users, and vendors have since worked together in defining a comprehensive integration framework-a blueprint for designing interoperable products and systems that exchange information using well established IT standards such as DICOM and HL7. A retrospective look at the past 6 years reveals the significant progress IHE has made in many areas. Integration and interoperability aspects have already been addressed by IHE for Radiology, Cardiology and Laboratory. Efforts to establish an IHE process in the Radiation Oncology domain are already under way while other clinical specialties will be included in the near future. Solutions to common (domain-independent) healthcare IT issues are also provided by IHE. Aside from its expansion in new clinical domains, IHE has gained wide recognition internationally. Regional and national IHE initiatives were established in North America, Europe and Asia. More countries are expected to join the initiative within the next years. Awareness and acceptance of IHE is steadily increasing among all the stakeholders. Users and vendors alike have recognized the benefits gained from implementing and deploying IHE as exemplified by many user success stories. To assist users, purchasers and systems integrators in acquiring and using IHE-based systems, the IHE organization is currently working on a Deployment Handbook in addition to the existing implementation specification (Technical Framework). This paper provides an overview of the current achievements, future directions and considerations for deploying IHE in reality.