Public Health at Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. IHE does not develop standards, but rather, specifies integration (interoperability) profiles that constrain the underlying standards to meet a defined clinical need. IHE specifies such profiles for several clinical domains, along with the information technology infrastructure needed to support these domains. Integration profiles have been specified for both intra-organization system communications and for inter-organization communications. Several of the IHE profiles have been selected by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) in support of the interoperability specifications for the American Health Information Community Use Cases including national public health use cases. IHE is entering into its second year of supporting public health initiatives to establish interoperable system communications between healthcare providers and public health stakeholders. In the first year, the White Paper “Building a Roadmap for HIT Interoperability for Public Health” has been developed by about 70 volunteers to help framing public health activities at IHE. Several public health integration profiles for Cancer Registries and Immunization Registries are under the development in the 2008 IHE profile development cycle. Recently, a new domain Quality, Research, and Public Health has been established at IHE. There is a need to assure broader involvement of public health professionals and the vendors that support them in the development of these new IHE profiling initiatives in order to accelerate the development of the standards-based interoperable exchanges.