IHE Connectathons: A Unique Testing Opportunity
IHE provides a detailed implementation and testing process to enable the adoption of standards-based interoperability by vendors and users of healthcare information systems. The process culminates in IHE Connectathon, face-to-face interoperability testing events held annually in various locations around the globe.
IHE-Europe Connectathon 2013
April 15-19
Halluç Congress Center
Istanbul, Turkey
Connectathon 2013 will bring healthcare interoperability to the edge of Europe with the ambition to reach further, attracting new participants from the Middle East, as suggested by this year's theme "Connect where the continents meet."
This intensive five-day 'connectivity marathon' will draw together companies implementing specifications developed by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), providing an opportunity to test their applications with systemsfrom other vendors. Last year's IHE-Europe Connectathon in Bern, Switzerland showed a record attendance of 520 participants and 85 companies for 2,800 interoperability tests among 120 medical information systems.
Organized by IHE-Turkey and IHE-Europe, Connectathon 2013 will be jointly sponsored by the Turkish Medical Informatics Association, the Turkish Society of Radiology (TurkRAD), and the Association for Medical Imaging Diagnosis and Treatment Technologies (TıpGörDer)
Click here for further information and to register as a testing participant
IHE North America Connectathon 2013
January 28 - February 2
Hyatt Regency
Chicago
Developers of health information systems are invited to take part in the HIT industry's largest interoperability testing event. First held in 1999, the annual event has grown continually in the scope and breadth of testing. In 2012 more than 150 systems from over 100 participating organizations were tested and more than 3500 successful tests of IHE Integration Profiles were performed and verified. In addition to nearly 500 systems engineers engaged in testing at the event, more than 100 attendees took part in a conference featuring prominent speakers on health IT and electronic health records.
Click here for further information and to register as a testing participant.
Preview sessions for prospective participants in the 2013 Connectathon begin June 20, 2012. Click here for further information about these sessions.
IHE-Europe Connectathon 2012
May 21-25
BernExpo
Bern, Switzerland
The 2012 IHE Europe Connectathon broke new ground in the range of IHE profiles tested and in the engagement of European ehealth leaders. Follow the links below for more detailed information.
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 Sheet that describes the process and timeline for the Connectathon.
IHE maintains a database of results from IHE-Europe and IHE-North America Connectathons.
