An overview of healthcare interoperability standards

Number of Days: One 8-hour day (on-site training courses), or two 4-hour sessions on 2 different days (online training courses).

Dates:

This training has not been scheduled this year; it is only provided upon request. Additional Information/Registration: please e-mail us at Training@ringholm.com.

This training course is also provided on-site upon request.

Summary of course content: The training course describes the key areas in which standardization is needed (e.g. workflows, messages, documents, terminologies and identification schemes) in order to achieve interoperability between software applications in healthcare. It also provides an overview of the key characteristics of some of the existing standards in this area (e.g. FHIR, CDA, DICOM, HL7 version 2, IHE, IEEE 10073, SNOMED and ICD).

Who Should Attend: This training course is aimed at those who'd like to understand the key characteristics of a number of, and the relationships between, commonly used interoperability standards. The target audience includes project managers, clinicians and architects, as well as a more technical audience (e.g. software developers) for whom this overview acts as an introduction to interoperability standards in healthcare.

Goals of the training course: Upon completion of this training course, attendees will be able to:

• understand the key characteristics of a number of commonly used interoperability standards,
• explain the relationship between HL7, IHE and DICOM standards,
• understand the key role of terminologies (e.g. SNOMED or ICD) as used by interoperability standards, and
• decide which standard is the best fit for a particular kind of workflow.

Prerequisites: The attendees are assumed to be familiar with healthcare workflows and processes, as well as some knowledge of data modelling.

Agenda

1. Introduction
2. Healthcare workflows: the need for standardization
   • The IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) methodology
   • The difference in focus between interoperability standards and standards such as OpenEHR/OMOP
3. Messaging: the exchange of structured data
   • HL7 version 2 - within hospitals
   • DICOM - disgnostic images
   • HL7 version 3 - between organizations (UK, Netherlands, Estonia and Finland only)
   • EDIFACT - within/between organizations (Netherlands, Sweden and UK (PMIP) only)
   • KMEHR - between organizations (Belgium only)
   • xDT (Germany only)
   • HPRIM/H' (France only)
4. Exercise: mapping workflows to standards, part 1
5. FHIR - the open API for healthcare
   • REST API, FHIR Messages, FHIR Documents
6. Documents: the exchange of textual data
   • HL7v3 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) (optional, on demand)
   • FHIR Documents
   • Kettering XML - discharge summary (UK only)
7. The use of a unified terminology and identification schemes
   • Unified terminologies, Terminology models and terminology servers
   • Unified identification schemes
8. Excercise: mapping workflows to standards, part 2
9. IHE workflow profiles
   • Examples: IHE Radiology workflows, IHE XDS, IHE DEC
10. IEEE 11073 - device communication standard (optional, on demand)
11. Summary and recommendations

Course Materials: Ringholm will provide each participant with handouts containing all materials covered in the training as well as other support materials.

Faculty: Rene Spronk (and/or other tutors, depending on the location and language of the training course).