IHE International Releases mHealth Profile for Comment

IHE International contributes new implantation guide to aid integration mobile technology into Health Information Exchange

Chicago (June 18, 2012) – Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) International announced  the Mobile Access to Health Documents (“MHD”) profile has been released for public comment.  This implementation guide is now available for public comment from IHE at http://www.ihe.net/Technical_Framework/public_comment.cfm#IT. Public comments can be submitted by any interested party at http://www.ihe.net/iti/iticomments.cfm.

The Mobile Access to Health Documents implementation guide enables simplified access to health documents for patients and providers using mobile devices.  Documents can be delivered to the device using a patient portal, an electronic health record (EHR), a personal health record (PHR), or via a Health Information Exchange (HIE).  The guide builds on earlier work from IHE enabling exchange of documents in HIEs, and which is currently adopted in numerous countries, including in the Nationwide Health Information Network in the United States.

Recognizing the limitations of many mobile devices, the guide describes a simplified application programming interface (API) supporting access to health documents.  The API is based upon web-accessible resources using RESTful approaches to query for metadata on health documents.

It leverages metadata concepts found in earlier IHE and HL7 specifications, but makes it easier to express in web-enabled devices and applications they commonly use.
The guide is designed for:

• Home Health and Health Monitoring devices such as those targeted by the IHE Patient Care Devices  Domain and Continua Health Alliance, enabling devices to submit documents

• Patient Kiosks used in hospital registration departments, where it is anticipated that a hospital staff member will review, edit, and approve the document before it is allowed into the hospital system.

• PHR apps publishing information to an EHR or HIE.

• Patient or provider apps enabling access to or submission of medical history data.

• Electronic measurement devices accessing patient medical histories from an EHR or HIE.
“Mobile Health is a rapidly emerging market, with a strong demand for health data access.” said John Moehrke of GE Healthcare, and editor for the effort, “We are really looking forward to industry feedback on this profile.”

“This work is essential if we are to create effective mobile health tools,” said Gerald Beuchelt, Principal Information Security Engineer, MITRE. “Industry is moving forward to augment the existing standard with a RESTful alternative based on recommendations from the HIT Standards Committee. In order to maintain consistent semantics across initiatives, we are building off existing architecture, such as hData, which for the last few years focused on crafting light weight exchange protocols with simplified data to represent content.”

About IHE International

IHE International, Inc. (www.ihe.net) is the global hub of the IHE initiative, a multi-stakeholder effort started in 1997 to promote the effective use of electronic health records and health information technology (HIT) by driving the adoption of standards-based solutions for interoperability. IHE International brings together HIT experts and stakeholders in more than a dozen clinical and operational domains to develop implementation guides call IHE Profiles that define the use of standards to address specific HIT interoperability needs. It also oversees a process of testing that fosters the adoption of IHE Profiles in real-world HIT products and care settings. IHE interoperability solutions are implemented in hundreds of products and in care sites around the world.

   

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