IHE Connectathons: A Unique Testing Opportunity IHE provides a detailed implementation and testing process to promote the adoption of standards-based interoperability by vendors and users of healthcare information systems. The process culminates in the Connectathon, a weeklong interoperability-testing event.
IHE North America Connectathon 2009
Dates have been set for the 10th annual IHE North America Connectathon, which will be held February 23-27, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, 151 E. Wacker Drive, Chicago. Further information is available here.
IHE-Europe Connectathon 2008 IHE-Europe held its annual Connectathon April 7-11, 2008 in Oxford, UK.
Further information, including a database of testing results, is available here.
Connectathon Overview The IHE Connectathon is the healthcare IT industry's only large-scale interoperability testing event. Connectathons are held annually in Asia, Europe and North America. During the Connectathon systems exchange information with complementary systems from multiple vendors, performing all of the transactions required for the roles they have selected, called IHE Actors, in support of defined clinical use cases, called IHE Profiles. Thousands of vendor-to-vendor connections have been tested overall, and tens of thousands of transactions passed among the systems tested. The sponsoring organizations publish the results of this testing for public review (see below).
The Connectathon provides detailed validation of the participants' interoperability and compliance with IHE profiles. Participating companies prepare for the event using testing software—the MESA test tools—developed for this purpose. It offers vendors a unique opportunity for connectivity testing—removing barriers to integration that would otherwise have to be dealt with on site, at the customer's expense. Companies taking part have responded overwhelmingly that the IHE process addresses important issues in their product development plans.
Organizations interested in participating in future Connectathons are encouraged to refer to the Connectathon Fact Sheetthat describes the process and timeline for the Connectathon.
IHE maintains a database of Results from IHE-Europe and IHE-North America Connectathons.
