The 2015 IHE-Europe Connectathon hit Luxembourg on a beautiful late spring day with some 300 technical experts from 100 companies all gathered for the annual Interoperability marathon. Within a matter of minutes it was down to the serious business of working with competitors and peers to ensure the interoperability of their health information products, which has been planned for many weeks.
The vendors travel from all parts of the globe to participate at the IHE-Europe Connectathon and return year after year to test against new IHE Profiles as they strive to demonstrate to their clients and end users that they can interoperate in a structured and rigorous environment with peer vendors.
IHE Symposium:Interoperability in Practice for eHealth and mHealth
Here with Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, (5th from left) were key guests from IHE-Europe, Med-e-Tel and Luxembourg eHealth Congress Officials on the occasion of the PM’s visit to the Med-e-Tel Forum and the IHE-Europe Connectathon on 22 April 2015.
The PM along with Health Minister, Lydia Mutsch opened the IHE Symposium: Interoperability in Practice for eHealth and mHealth. The seminar room was packed for the entire day. They toured the Connectathon and were shown the Trillium Gateway implementation; it allows the exchange of patient summary information across the Atlantic between USA and Europe.
IHE-Europe Vendor Co-chair, Lapo Bertini and the Luxembourg Minister of Health, Lydia Mutsch, both spoke at the opening ceremony of the Med-e-Tel Forum, welcoming delegates to Luxembourg for the 13th International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth and thanking IHE-Europe for bringing the Connectathon to the Duchy.
Conformity Assessment Programme
During the last days of IHE-Europe Connectathon in Luxembourg, the Conformity Assessment Programme came into its own and a number of vendors submitted their products for accredited testing. Kereval, in partnership with IHE-Services, performed the testing and issued an IHE International Conformity Assessment Report, valid for two years. Here they are some quotes from the user community, the vendor side and the management side of the Conformity Assessment Programme:
Claudio Saccavini “The Conformity Assessment Report is of great value in a Public Tender as we can take the Report from an accredited source as proof of interoperability without the need to retest, saving time and money. From the perspective of quality, Conformity Assessment ensures a guaranteed consistency of product and solution – that is of great value when evaluating vendors and making procurement decisions."
Chris Lindop “From the vendor perspective Conformity Assessment brings real market credibility for the company and its products and it ensures that solutions are cross vendor interoperable for the customer’s needs. They can feel confident in what we are delivering. It is also of great benefit to a vendor to know that the procurement process is being handled professionally and vendors would applaud the ISO standard accreditation initiative coming from IHE International.”
Chris Carr “Connectathon testing has primarily focused on practical interoperability – peer to peer. Conformity Assessment adds greater rigour in detailed testing of standards performance against validation tools, by an accredited laboratory. This provides greater assurance of consistent uniform adherence to specifications and easier deployment for end-users”.
