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 2012
January 9-13
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 to include more than 150 systems from over 100 participating organizations 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 detailed information and registration for this year's event.
IHE-Europe Connectathon 2012
May 21-25
BernExpo
Bern, Switzerland
The 2012 IHE Europe Connectathon will again provide a testing opportunity for the comprehensive set of IHE Profiles. Click here for detailed information, registration for this year's event and check back for information about registration and other important details for prospective participants.
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.
