IHE “Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise”-an update for Information Technology Infrastructure for 2005

The Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise initiative addresses issues of information technology interoperability in healthcare, including issues of cross-departmental and cross-enterprise IT infrastructure. A number of new integration profiles have been developed in this field in 2004. Personnel White Pages allow to set-up a central database of human workforce members including user identity management. Audit Trail and Node Authentication provides basic IT security infrastructure. Patient Demographics Queries allow quick access to patient demographics based on a central patient information server. Cross-enterprise Document Sharing is a first step towards an inter-institutional “longitudinal” electronic healthcare record. The use of IHE terminology and information structures allows for an easy and fully interoperable installation of even complex IT systems in healthcare. Therefore, an inclusion of IHE integration profiles into requests for tenders is recommended by the German Foundation for Research for better clarification of the systems to be installed.