RSNA attendees who are thinking about skipping the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) demonstration because they saw last year’s presentation will be sorry.
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IHE Year 2 Demonstration Participants |
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| A.L.I. Technologies ADAC Healthcare Information Systems Agfa Medical Imaging Algotec Systems Ltd. Analogic Applicare Medical Imaging B.V. ATL Ultrasound – a Philips Medical Systems Co. Binnacle Canon Medical Systems Cedara Software CSIST Eastman Kodak Emageon Fuji Medical Systems U.S.A. GE Medical Systems GMD |
Hologic – Direct Radiography Corp. IDX Systems Corporation Imco Technologies Konica Marconi Medical Systems medQ Merge Technologies Mitra Imaging Philips Medical Systems RASNA Imaging Systems Siemens Medical Systems Softmedical Shared Medical Systems StorComm Swissray International Tiani Medgraph Vital Images |
Chris Carr, assistant director of informatics at the Radiological Society of North America, says there are more companies bringing more devices and more ideas to the IHE Year 2 Demonstration at the Lakeside Center at McCormick Place.
“Last year established a basic radiology workflow that closed the PACS/HIS/RIS loop,” Carr says. “This year, some new twists are added to that workflow to handle some exceptional cases.”
One area of focus at IHE Year 2 will be image consistency. Printer and monitor vendors will be on hand to display consistent DICOM images using DICOM image consistency standards for the first time.
Carr says the IHE Year 2 demonstration also will feature the first transactions using DICOM structured reports. “We’ll generate reports, manage them and share them with the necessary systems,” he adds.
One of IHE’s long-term goals is getting off the ground this year with the first steps toward interdepartmental information sharing. IHE will show a query transaction for gathering outside information, such as lab values, and letting outside departments know images are available and how they can find them.
The number of companies participating in IHE has grown to 33 this year, compared with 24 at RSNA ‘99. (See chart.)
Notable among the missing is IT giant Cerner Corp. (Kansas City, Mo.), while Shared Medical Systems (Malvern, Pa.) will use its new Siemens Medical Engineering (Erlangen, Germany) backing to participate for the first time.
The format and layout of the demonstration area will be similar to last year, with four simulated healthcare enterprises (SHEs). The SHEs are likely to be more crowded this year, with more vendors offering more devices. Self-guided tours of certain demonstrations will be offered. Unlike last year, no advanced ticketing is required to attend the IHE.
IHE Symposium
The IHE Symposium educational sessions will run Wednesday through Friday and offer both clinical and technical sessions. The “meeting within a meeting” will feature two plenary addresses and 16 panel sessions on a wide variety of topics including: Telemedicine as a Strategic Tool; Healthcare IT Standards; Clinical Use of Intranets; and Security, Confidentiality and Privacy.
The symposium will include tutorials and hands-on computer workshops. According to a preliminary schedule from RSNA, the IHE Symposium is open Wednesday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., Thursday 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
InfoRad at a glance
Beyond the IHE, Carr has a few recommendations for the integration-minded attendee. The InfoRad exhibit in the Lakeside Center is always a good place to start. InfoRad will feature more than 100 educational exhibits in the following categories: decision support, education, image manipulation, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, PACS and new technologies.
There will be a hands-on workshop called “The Integrated Radiology Department” that will utilize the IHE-based integration of HIS and RIS and PACS and modalities. This workshop is scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
New to InfoRad this year is a Web-based classroom with three offerings in the refresher course series. The first session focuses on transmitting images from a PACS to a PC. The second program reviews Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and incorporating radiology images. The third and final session discusses how to use a Web site to augment a radiology practice.
The Department of Veteran’s Affairs will have a demonstration at InfoRad that takes what has been done at IHE and incorporates cardiology and opthamology transactions and systems. 
