Overview
ISO/TR 28380-1:2014 describes the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) global standards adoption process for health informatics. The technical report explains how IHE specifies and facilitates Integration Profiles and Content Profiles-constrained, implementation-ready subsets of base standards-to accelerate worldwide adoption of interoperability solutions across healthcare enterprises and care settings. ISO/TR 28380-2 contains the Integration and Content Profiles themselves.
Keywords: ISO/TR 28380-1:2014, IHE, health informatics, interoperability, Integration Profile, Technical Framework
Key topics and technical requirements
- Development and deployment processes: a structured lifecycle where documented use cases drive selection and profiling of base standards, followed by validation and deployment into production.
- Levels of requirements: profiles constrain options in foundation standards to reduce ambiguity and increase interoperable implementations.
- Profile types:
- Integration Profile: specifies coordinated information exchanges to support a specific business workflow.
- Content Profile: defines standards-based information content (e.g., documents) exchanged by Integration Profiles.
- Actors and transactions: profiles describe functional components (“actors”) and the transactions (message exchanges) between them.
- Deployment-validation: supervised interoperability testing (e.g., Connectathon) and mechanisms for implementers to declare compliance (Integration Statements).
- Governance and participation: stakeholder involvement, liaison with Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) and policies for public comment, trial implementations, and maintenance of the IHE Technical Framework.
- Technical Framework: the collection of profile specifications for a clinical or technology domain; profiles can be combined across frameworks.
Practical applications
- Guides vendors in building interoperable healthcare IT components (EHRs, PACS, registries).
- Supports healthcare IT implementers and IT departments in choosing tested, standards-based integration approaches.
- Enables regional and national health information exchange projects to adopt interoperable architectures.
- Facilitates procurement specifications and vendor conformance claims based on IHE Integration Statements.
- Provides a repeatable process to reduce fragmentation and speed deployment of multi-vendor solutions.
Who uses this standard
- Healthcare IT vendors and product architects
- Hospital and clinical IT departments
- Standards developers and implementers (ISO, HL7, DICOM, IETF, IEEE, OASIS)
- Health information exchange program leads and policymakers
Related standards
- ISO/TR 28380-2 (Integration and Content Profiles)
- Base and referenced SDOs: HL7, DICOM, ISO/TC 215, IEEE, IETF, OASIS, W3C
ISO/TR 28380-1:2014 is a practical reference for anyone implementing or managing standards-based interoperability projects in healthcare, providing a tested process to move from use case to validated multi-vendor deployment.