IHE is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. IHE promotes the coordinated use of established standards, such as DICOM and HL7, to address specific clinical needs and support of optimum patient care. Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively.
The Patient Identifier Cross Referencing for HL7v3 (PIXv3) Integration Profile provides cross-referencing of patient identifiers from multiple Patient Identifier Domains. These patient identifiers can then be used by identity consumer systems to correlate information about a single patient from sources that know the patient by different identifiers. This profile uses HL7 V3 as the message format, and SOAP-based web services for transport. The profile supports the cross-referencing of patient identifiers from multiple Patient Identifier Domains by:
- Transmitting patient identity information from an identity source to the Patient Identifier Cross-reference Manager.
- Providing the ability to access the list(s) of cross-referenced patient identifiers either via a query/ response or via an update notification.
The functionality of this profile is identical to the PIX profile described in section 2.2.3 of the IT Infrastructure Technical Framework (Vol 1). The differences are in the format of the messages and in the use of SOAP-based web services. These changes make this profile well-suited for use within an existing IT infrastructure for cross-enterprise data access and exchange. The PIXV3 profile supports the cross-referencing of patient identifiers from multiple Patient Identifier Domains.
These cross-referenced patient identifiers can then be used by “identity consumer” systems to correlate information about a single patient from sources that “know” the patient by different identifiers. This allows a clinician to have a more complete view of the patient information. The scope of the Patient Identity Feed, the PIX Query, and the PIX Update Notification is identical to that for the HL7 v2.5 messages used in the PIX Integration Profile (i.e., the same transaction semantics, the same message constraints). However, in this version we are providing more details for implementers of the individual transactions, and we are using the 2007 DSTU of the HL7 V3 Patient Topic as the basis of the messages in the transaction.
Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing is focused on providing a standards-based specification for managing the sharing of documents between any healthcare enterprise, ranging from a private physician office to a clinic to an acute care in-patient facility and personal health record systems. This is managed through federated document repositories and a document registry to create a longitudinal record of information about a patient within a given clinical affinity domain. These are distinct entities with separate responsibilities:
- A Document Repository is responsible for storing documents in a transparent, secure, reliable and persistent manner and responding to document retrieval requests.
- A Document Registry is responsible for storing information about those documents so that the documents of interest for the care of a patient may be easily found, selected and retrieved irrespective of the repository where they are actually stored.
- Documents are provided by one or more Document Sources
- They are then accessed by one or more Document Consumers
Cross-Community Patient Discovery - supports the means to locate communities which hold patient-relevant health data and the translation of patient identifiers across communities holding the same patient’s data..
