IHE Connectathon Participation Offers Unmatched Value

IHE Community,

IHE Connectathon Offers Unparalleled Opportunity for HIT Testing
Vendors and developers of Healthcare IT systems have a unique opportunity to prepare their products for the emerging world of comprehensive electronic records, health information exchanges and “Meaningful Use” incentives. The IHE North America Connectathon, taking place January 17-21, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago is the healthcare IT industry's largest face-to-face interoperability testing event. Last year's Connectathon drew nearly 400 individual testing participants from more than 70 organizations.

Connectathon testing is based upon IHE profiles, implementation guides for HIT standards that enable effective interoperability across a wide range of clinical settings, including health information exchanges. They support capabilities required to meet standards and certification criteria issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services and qualify for incentives payments for the use of electronic health records from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The unique supervised testing environment of the Connectathon enables the broadest and most efficient cross-vendor testing possible, saving time and money for developers seeking to achieve effective interoperability. IHE profiles will be available for testing in eight clinical and operational domains:

• Anatomic Pathology
• Cardiology
• IT Infrastructure
• Laboratory
• Patient Care Coordination
• Patient Care Device
• Quality, Research and Public Health
• Radiology

Registration fees are structured to encourage testing across domains, in many cases allowing systems to add testing of profiles in new domains for free.

Connectathon results are published in a publicly available database and IHE will publish links to integration statements describing the IHE capabilities available in their products. Connectathon testing is also required preparation for participants in the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS11, February 21-24 in Orlando, Florida.

Applications for testing participants are available online at http://draft.blogger.com/www.ihe.net/north_america/connectathon2011.cfm. The submission deadline is Friday, Oct. 8, 2010.