IHE Week

Normally I would still be in the IHE PCC Meeting, but given that today starts @MassGoverner's #MAHIT conference, I'm sitting in a hotel lobby in Boston.  I spent the last three days in Oakbrook, Illinois to discuss IHE Patient Care Coordination Profiles that are being prepared for Public Comment.

We had published the Perinatal Workflow profile for public comment and got some feedback, but because we published off-cycle, we didn't get as much feedback as we would like.  So, it will be revised and republished for public comment back on cycle.  Hopefully we will recieve more comments later.

On Tuesday the ITI, PCC and Quality, Research and Public Health domains were introduced to the Image Enabled Office profile being developed by the Cardiology domain.  This profile reuses existing work similar to the way that the Perinatal Workflow profile does.  I expect it to be published for public comment in a couple of weeks and will post the announcement when I receive it.

The Patient Centered Coordination Plan being developed by several members down-under is getting a lot of attention.  This profile allows for a "Coordination Plan" to be shared with providers, and enables those providers to report on the healthcare tasks they've taken on back to the Care Coordinator.  Written initialy to address coordination of care for chronically ill patients, this profile will support many kinds of case management workloads.  The Public Health contingent from QRPH was very interested in this work.

Several new members came to the PCC meeting this week, and because they arrived later in the day, didn't get the benefit of our usual introductory presentation.  We clearly have some work to do to explain our processes.  We know how we develop CDA profiles, but the tools to make that easy are still under development in HL7.  The HL7 Templates registry project should be a huge lift here (when I get further along with it, I'll write a post on that).  I got a lot of valuable "voice of the customer" feedback on what that registry UI needs to look like for template developers.

We've been talking about holding our February 2010 meeting in Canada, it being not quite as inaccessible as other parts of the world to many of our US contingency, but also as a way to introduce them to the idea that IHE is International, and that they should plan for some International travel.

I'll be tweeting today from Governer Duval Patric's HIT conference in downtown Boston.  Look for #MAHIT on twitter.