Introduction
The goal of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative is to stimulate integration of healthcare information resources to improve clinical care. IHE develops and publishes detailed frameworks for implementing established data standards to meet specific healthcare needs and supports testing, demonstration and educational activities to promote the deployment of these frameworks by vendors and users.
To pursue these activities, IHE engages the efforts of numerous stakeholders, including care providers, medical and IT professionals, professional associations and vendors. As the initiative has continued to expand worldwide and to encompass a growing number of clinical domains, it has becomes increasingly important to agree upon a general framework for the participation of these stakeholders that is sufficiently well defined to provide effective communication and cooperation. This framework must also be flexible enough to reflect the cooperative and voluntary nature of the initiative and foster growth and innovation. This document describes the general structure and set of responsibilities for IHE committees and involved organizations, which is intended to meet these goals and which builds upon the existing organization and operations of the initiative.
Under this organizational framework, IHE activities are divided into two principle categories:
- Development activities -- the work process that leads to publication of the IHE Technical Framework, and
- Deployment activities -- testing and demonstrations, as well as promotional and educational efforts.
