What is Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise - Radiation Oncology (IHE-RO)?
IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) is an international collaborative effort that aims to improve vendor product compatibility across all segments of healthcare technologies. The ultimate goal is to improve patient care and reduce medical errors by improving interoperability and eliminating incompatibilities. IHE-RO is the radiation oncology domain of IHE.
IHE does not create new standards, but rather drives the adoption of existing standards to address and solve your specific clinical needs. IHE Integration Profiles specify precisely how standards are to be used to address specific clinical problems, eliminating ambiguities, reducing configuration and interfacing costs and ensuring a higher level of practical interoperability between products and vendors.
Formed in 2004 by ASTRO, the IHE-RO task force is a multisociety, multinational and multispecialty committee charged with addressing issues of interoperability and information sharing between the various radiation oncology tools, which impact the quality of care in radiation oncology. The IHE-RO task force consists of a Planning Committee and a Technical Committee.
How can IHE-RO Help You?
The IHE-RO Planning and Technical Committees work together to address interoperability issues in radiation oncology. They solve these problems by going through the following four phases of the IHE process:
- Identify Interoperability Problems
The Planning Committee identifies interoperability problems that stand in the way of clinical care and develops examples of real-life clinical scenarios that address those problems. We encourage you to participate and describe to us any interoperability issues that you face at your facility.
Submit your problem so that IHE-RO may begin to address the work.
- Specify Integration Profiles
The Technical Committee studies the problems cases, or “Use Cases” submitted by the planning committee to determine the technical requirements and the feasibility of finding solutions to these problems. The technical committee then creates a document describing the technical aspects of the Use Case as an “Integration Profile.” Example profiles are: Normal treatment planning, Multimodality registration for radiation oncology and Radiation therapy treatment workflow, for details, please click here.
- Test Integration Profiles at ‘Connectathon’
Once the profiles are finalized, vendors implement them and test their systems with software tools first and then test with other vendor systems during an annual face-to-face testing session called a Connectathon. Successful completion of the testing requires a vendor system to receive information from at least three other vendors who support the previous step in the information flow, and to transmit information to three vendors whose applications represent the next step. The vendors who passed the Connectathon for one or more of the profiles will get access to the Public Demonstration, which generally takes place in the exhibit hall during the ASTRO Annual Meeting.
- Publish Integration Profiles for use in RFPs (Request For Proposal)
Finally, vendors can publish IHE integration Statements to document the integration profiles supported by their products. When you or your institution buys new software and equipment these tested “integration profiles” can be used in Requests For Proposals, simplifying the systems acquisition process. These IHE-RO solutions are now available in many of the commercial radiation oncology related treatment planning, deliver, and information systems. For the current available integration statements for released products, click on the links below.
Company Name |
Product |
Integration Statements |
ELEKTA |
MOSAIQ Oncology PACS 2007 |
|
| ELEKTA |
MOSAIQ Oncology PACS 2008 |
|
Nucletron |
Oncentra Masterplan |
|
Siemens AG Healthcare Sector |
Syngo MultiModality Workplace 2009B |
|
Varian |
Eclipse Treatment Planning System V8.5 |
|
How can you support IHE-RO?
- Encourage your vendors to participate in IHE-RO
- Use IHE-RO integration profiles in your RFP for all your new products
- Submit your interconnectivity problems so that IHE-RO may begin to address them
If you need additional information, please contact ihero at astro.org.
Useful links:
www.ihe.net
- The official page for Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise.
wiki.ihe.net
- The official Wiki page for IHE including committee member information, schedules of activities, meeting agendas and minutes, and working documents.
www.ihe.net/governance/patent_disclosure.cfm
