IHE
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise — non-standards-body that defines implementation profiles for healthcare interoperability. IHE doesn't write standards; it specifies how to combine DICOM, HL7, and FHIR in real-world workflows so that vendor implementations actually interoperate. Profiles in radiology include:
- SWF (Scheduled Workflow) — order → schedule → acquire → store → report.
- PIR (Patient Information Reconciliation) — fixing demographic mismatches between modality and PACS.
- CPI (Consistent Presentation of Images) — same study looks the same across reading workstations.
- XDS-I (Cross-Enterprise Imaging) — multi-organization imaging exchange.
- REM (Radiation Exposure Monitoring) — dose-tracking integration.
- MAMMO (Mammography Image) — mammography-specific workflow.
Why it matters to buyers: Profiles turn DICOM + HL7 into real-world deployments. Hospital RFPs commonly specify IHE profile support — "must comply with SWF, CPI, REM" — as the practical-interoperability baseline. A vendor's IHE Integration Statement is more actionable than its bare DICOM conformance statement.
Why it matters to engineers: IHE Connectathons test interop across vendors before products reach customer sites. The IHE Radiology Technical Framework is the imaging-specific spec bible. Failed real-world integrations almost always involve a profile assumption one side made and the other didn't.