What is IHE?

IHE Australia 2010 Activities

Patient Care Coordination

IHE Australia is grateful for the support and co-funding from the Department of Health and Ageing for the Australian 2009-10 IHE activities:

"The Department of Health and Ageing is supporting Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) Australia by providing sponsorship for IHE Australia&'s Connectathon activities, which will be based on national e-health standards.  The Department's objective in providing sponsorship is to support interoperability based on Australian standards and the National e-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) specifications in order to achieve the goals of the National e-Health Strategy.

The 2nd IHE Australia Connectathon, to be held 28-31 July 2009, will test the enhanced Portable Imaging Profiles and the Australian ePathology and eReferrals messaging payloads.  IHE Australia will also hold an Interoperability Showcase at the joint Industry Exhibition of HIC'09 and Health-e-Nation 17-21 August 2009 at the Canberra Convention Centre.  These are some of the qualifying events for the Practice Incentives Program (PIP) eHealth Secure Messaging Connectathon to be held in early 2010 for vendors to validate the interoperability of their systems using the secure messaging specifications jointly developed by NEHTA and the Medical Software Industry Association.

This collaboration between the Department and IHE Australia will support the implementation of the PIP eHealth Incentive, which aims to encourage general practices to keep up to date with the latest developments in eHealth, including the adoption of a secure messaging capability.

The PIP eHealth Secure Messaging Connectathon will offer software vendors the opportunity to test their interoperability using the NEHTA secure messaging specifications.  Software vendors and products that meet the specified conformance testing, to be undertaken by the Australian Healthcare Messaging Laboratory, will be publicly acknowledged.

The Department of Health and Ageing encourages all software vendors to participate in both the 2nd IHE Australia Connectathon in July 2009 and the PIP eHealth Secure Messaging Connectathon in 2010 and to work with the NEHTA to adopt the national e-health standards."

We are delighted that the Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Radiologists has also expressed its support for the 2009 IHE Australia e-health systems interoperability testing program:

The RANZCR supports Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) in its continued efforts to promote systems interoperability and standardisation in Healthcare IT.

The transition to digital diagnostic imaging has the potential to add value to the healthcare system through quicker and more efficient access to images, fewer lost and repeated studies and greater diagnostic information content of the studies.  In order to successfully manage this transition, there needs to be greater emphasis on standards, professional collaboration and understanding of the impacts of change when new technologies are introduced.

When radiologist medical opinion and image are delivered electronically, Australian implementations of international standards and profiles should be used.  Digital image data delivery should comply with DICOM standards and the IHE Portable Data for Imaging (PDI) profile.  The RANZCR 'Standards of Practice' ask practices to be IHE-PDI and DICOM compliant, or be working towards compliance, by January 2010.  This is a requirement for RANZCR-NATA accreditation.

The RANZCR encourages its members to implement systems and transfer media that comply with international standards and profiles.  Practices should consider IT vendors who can verify conformance with these standards, supported by testing at events such as the IHE Connectathon, when making procurement decisions.