Abstract
Rationale and objectives
During the last 4 years, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) has worked in
establishing a reliable integrated environment for medical imaging devices and other
clinical information systems by using existing industry standards such as Digital
Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Level Seven (HL7). Because
IHE is organized and driven by professional organizations representing both buyers
and vendors, it was able to define a common language for the various health care parties
who are involved in the integration process. Thus IHE offers a rigorously organized
technical framework that provides a comprehensive guide for a coordinated implementation
of information standards.
Materials and methods
A multistage plan for incorporating the IHE elements while scaling up general-purpose
workstations with teleradiology functionalities to a full-feature picture archiving
and communication system (PACS) solution was created. To introduce a pragmatic example,
the plan approach was applied to the CHILI workstations (CHILI, Heidelberg, Germany).
To implement the proposed plan in making various legacy systems comply with IHE, the
effects of available resources and market needs on the plan are discussed. Most implementation
challenges and problems were overcome using generic design approaches and well-designed
DICOM utilities.
Results
On completion of the first stage, the PACS viewer and reporting workstations were
IHE-compliant. In addition, the plan facilitates the conformance process while maintaining
the planned software development cycle.
Conclusion
Based on these positive results and the practical experience acquired during the first
stage, further stages will be completed to provide the system with the required plug-and-play
interoperability among systems from different vendors.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
December 8,
2003
Received:
August 14,
2003
Identification
Copyright
© 2004 Association of University Radiologists. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
