26 April 2011 -- Protocols setting new international communication standards for the Pharmacy domain were validated during week-long testing at the 11th annual IHE European Connectathon held in Pisa April 11 to 15, 2011.

Profiles for managing the prescription-dispensation process of a patient in both a community and hospital pharmacy setting were tested to demonstrate the interoperability of data with other healthcare IT systems, such as those used by general practitioners. It was the first real-time test of protocols to transfer information or to guide the workflow for medication dispenses that were created using the open development methods of Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE).

"The testing success marks a solid step forward on the IHE development path and is a crowning achievement for four years of hard work by an international team of volunteers," said Jürgen Brandstätter, chair of the Technical Committee for the IHE Pharmacy Domain.

The IHE Integration Profiles tested for the Pharmacy domain represent building blocks that will allow new layers of drug prescription, dispensation and administration activities to be added, he said.

According to IHE Pharmacy Co Chair for Users, Jacqueline Surugue, "Today patients have two different faces, one with the hospital pharmacy and another with the community pharmacy. The IHE Pharmacy Profiles are critically important to create a single, persistent patient record that can be shared with any other system using the readily available IHE Integration Profiles for seamless care between hospital and community."

The tests were validated by four systems that served different roles, or actors, in the prescription-dispensation process.

The IHE Pharmacy domain is sponsored by the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP), the National IT Institute for Healthcare in the Netherlands (NICTIZ), and Association Phast, a non-profit organization developing healthcare information technology standards.

For more information about IHE-Europe please visit: www.ihe-europe.net.

About Connectathon

Connectathon is the healthcare IT industries largest interoperability testing event, the culmination of a detailed development process based on the IHE Technical Frameworks that promote the adoption of standards-based interoperability by vendors and users of healthcare information systems. Once each year Connectathons held in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia provide developers an opportunity to demonstrate conformance to internationally accepted integration profiles that assure any IHE-compliant system can share data and interoperate with any other IHE compliant system.

About IHE-Europe

IHE-Europe is the European organisation of the international IHE organisation. ‘Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise’ (IHE) is a joint initiative of 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, XML and HL7 to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. Systems developed in accordance with IHE specifications communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively.

Press contacts:

Eric Poiseau IHE-Europe Technical Project Manager Tel: +33 (0)2 99 84 74 58 technical.manager@ihe-europe.net

Marie-Astrid Libert IHE-Europe Communications Tel: +32 (2) 706 89 60 office@ihe-europe.net


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