What is IHE?
“Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise” (IHE) is a joint initiative of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and another USA-based society, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). It aims to develop a framework to ease the integration of, and information flow between, various medical information systems, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all required clinical information is correct and readily available to the relevant users. Currently, interfacing systems can be difficult due to the different standards – and implementation of those standards – employed by such systems. IHE aims to define how existing standards may be used in order to facilitate communication between computer systems used in healthcare; initially, IHE will concentrate on DICOM and HL7 but may extend to other standards if necessary.

Why do we need IHE?
Increasingly in healthcare, computer systems are used to acquire and store patient information, test results, and images. A single patient can have data stored on several disparate computer systems; to maximise its value, data from multiple sources needs to be available to clinical users at a single point of use. Standards have been developed to improve information flow within systems (e.g. DICOM within medical imaging systems, and HL7 within clinical information systems); IHE aims to improve information flow between these systems by taking existing standards and providing a framework for their implementation, so that information can be shared with maximum efficiency.

Why do I need to know about IHE?
Knowledge of IHE can give many benefits to users and implementers of hospital information systems.
Modern healthcare draws on a number of disparate resources, including a variety of information systems. In order to provide the best possible patient care, information from all resources can be utilised. However, the ability of the various  systems to communicate with each other effectively is often lacking. IHE seeks to promote effective communication between information systems in order to aid efficient and economic healthcare.

Does IHE address data security or confidentiality issues?
IHE does not deal directly with security or confidentiality of data. However, it is expected that implementing a system under the IHE framework will reduce the number of human interactions in any procedure, removing some completely and replacing others with electronic (machine to machine) interactions, thus reducing security risks and increasing the opportunities for implementing audit trails and password control.

Is my knowledge of DICOM and HL7 redundant?
No. IHE does not replace DICOM or HL7; it provides a framework under which existing standards (including DICOM and HL7) can be used to allow maximum integration of different computer systems that use these different standards.

Who is responsible for the IHE documentation?
A group formed by the RSNA and by HIMSS is responsible for the development of the IHE documentation. The IHE group is open to participation from other organisations, such as equipment manufacturers, standards development groups, hospital staff and academia. For more information or to participate, contact ihe@rsna.org or ihe@himss.org, or visit the IHE global resource at http://www.ihe.net/  Specific IHE documentation relevant to the UK is being developed with the backing of the British Institute of Radiology (BIR), by a group including radiologists, clinical scientists and medical imaging systems manufacturers. Document produced so far are available on this site.