The IHE Patient Care Device (PCD) domain was formed in 2005 to address the integration of medical devices into the healthcare enterprise, from the point-of-care to the EHR, potentially resulting in significant improvements in patient safety and quality of care. In 2006/2007 the first profile was successfully developed, tested in a Connectathon and demonstrated at HIMSS '07, exchanging information from vital signs, physiological monitors, ventilators, infusion pumps, and anesthesia workstations with enterprise applications such as clinical information systems. This enterprise-level integration is actively being extended to point-of-care integration, as well as to new workflow integration needs, such as alarm communication management.
IHE PCD is sponsored by the American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) and the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS).
IHE PCD Profiles IHE Patient Care Device integration profiles include:
- [DEC] Device Enterprise Communication supports publication of information acquired from point-of-care medical devices to applications such as clinical information systems and electronic health record systems, using a consistent messaging format and device semantic content.
- [DEC-PIB] Patient Identity Binding provides an optional extension to the DEC profile that supports a means of binding authenticated patient identity information to device data communication transactions.
- [DEC-SPD] Subscribe to Patient Data provides an optional extension to the DEC profile that supports a publish / subscribe mechanism for applications to negotiate what device data they receive based on a set of client-specified predicates.
Each of these profiles is defined in full detail in the
IHE PCD Technical Framework.
Profile development is active in the following areas:
- Rosetta Terminology Mapping Profile correlates company-specific device semantics to a standards-based terminological representation.
- Alarm Communication Management Profile supports the remote communication of point-of-care medical device alarm conditions.
- Point-of-Care Infusion Verification Profile supports the 5-Rights of drug delivery using PCD profiles.
- Real-time Point-of-Care Plug-and-Play Interoperability Profile supports communication between medical devices as well as with device data management systems.
PCD Planning and Technical Committees The IHE PCD Planning and Technical Committees are responsible for developing IHE integration profiles and planning deployment activities, such as testing events and educational programs. The PCD committees are composed of users and developers of medical devices/systems and information systems. The membership of these and other IHE domain committees, along with schedules of activities, meeting agendas and minutes and working documents can be found on the IHE Wiki.
The PCD Planning and Technical Committees have established Google Groups for email communication. You can subscribe to these distribution lists by visiting each Group's home page or using the forms below:
