The Connectathon: IHE’s Conformance Testing Event Presented by: Mike Nusbaum Mike Glickman IHE Connectathon & Interoperability Showcase Planning Committees January 12 th, 2010

Why are we here? How can one claim interoperability without Conformance Testing??!!

The “Mike’s”

Objective and Agenda What is the Connectathon? To provide a high-level understanding of the Connectathon, its processes, and the value within the context of IHE To describe what is currently happening on the Connectathon floor To prepare you for a tour of the Connectathon floor, immediately following this presentation…

Did you know… The first Connectathon – held in 1999 in Chicago – 23 vendors, 47 applications tested, 1 Integration Profile Connectathons are held annually in North America, Europe and Asia

Did you know… The 2010 North American Connectathon boasts: – 104 vendors and organizations (up from 71 in 2009) – >150 individual systems being tested – 498 engineers working collaboratively to test interoperability – 1000’s of vendor-vendor connections; 10,000’s of transactions – Day 1 (yesterday): 506 tests complete, 314 in the queue. Last year, 1714 tests were completed by end of Day 3. – 498 x 8 hrs/day x 5 days = 19,920 engineer-hours x $100/hr = $2 million of test effort (not including prep and setup time!!). 79 vendors to continue on to promote their success at the 2010 Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS

North American Connectathon Testing of vendors’ conformance to IHE Integration Profiles Testing of vendors’ conformance to HITSP Interoperability Specifications Future: pan-Canadian HIT standards pan-Canadian HIT standards FHA Connect specifications FHA Connect specifications NIST specifications NIST specifications State HIE specifications State HIE specifications Regional Extension Centers Regional Extension Centers Other… Other…

Timely access to information Easy to integrate products Products with IHE IHE Demonstrations Develop technical specifications IHE’s Proven Standards Adoption Process Document Use Case Requirements Identify available standards ( e.g. HL7, DICOM, IETF, OASIS) Testing at Connectathons

IHE Testing Process Users Sponsors: Project Management Team Vendors Sponsors: Exhibits Develop Testing Tools Implement Profile Actors In-House Testing Connectathon Demonstration Deploy Systems Testing Results Approves Test Logs IHE Technical Framework (IHE Profile Specifications) Product + Integration Statement

Encouraging Vendors to Implement IHE Integration Profiles Connectathon participation is open to all “software developers”, vendors, open source, providers IHE Integration Profiles (Interoperability Specifications) are set before sponsors issue a call for participation, with a “hard” deadline Vendors who pass the IHE Connectathon tests are given the opportunity to demonstrate IHE capabilities during major conferences (HIMSS, ACC, RSNA, e- Health, etc.) Vendors that implement IHE profiles assume strategic and marketing advantages

What is a Connectathon? Cross-vendor, live, supervised, structured tests All participating vendors’ products tested together in the same place/time Experts from each vendor available for immediate problem resolution… fixes are done in minutes, not months!! Each vendor tests with multiple trading partners (actual product to actual product) Testing of real-world clinical scenarios using IHE Integration Profiles

Connectathon Testing is based on specifications laid out in the Technical Framework Part 1: Integration Profiles model the business process problem (use case) and its solution. Part 2: Transactions define how current standards are used to solve the business problem defined in the Integration Profiles. Connectathon: Vendors register to test their product as an actor(s) within an Integration Profile

Connectathon: Managed Process Testing Management Tool (Gazelle) – test management, execution, results Real-time “dashboard” indicating tests in progress Successful results recorded and available using automated tools, and published by IHE sponsors Structured testing supervised by Technical Project Management team (4 PM’s and approx 50 Monitors)

“Real-Time” Connectathon Results Tool contains Connectathon results from 2001 to present Part of the “KUDU” project management tool, developed in part by IHE Europe (moving to Gazelle) IHE has launched a new PRODUCT REGISTRY, containing specific vendors’ product implementations of IHE Integration Profiles

Testing Tools Kudu » MESA » Gazelle Software and documentation distributed to vendors participating in the testing process Each test performs functional testing of a single actor, in a specific profile, by simulating remaining actors Tests must be successfully completed before the Connectathon

Developers of Testing Tools Contracted developers have included: Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington Univ. (St. Louis) University of Rennes and INRIA, France Northwestern University OFFIS and University of Mainz, Germany University of Quebec, École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS) Contributors of tools and resources: NIST, US Dept of Commerce French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) Canada Health Infoway DICOM Validation Toolkit (DVTK) TIANI-Spirit...and others Other collaborators: Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) / MITRE Corporation Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)

Gazelle Project Next generation of IHE testing tools Trialed in Vienna in Apr/09, fully deployed Apr/10 Make Connectathon testing more efficient and thorough Enable remote online testing to supplement Connectathon (“virtual Connectathon”) Development sponsored by IHE North America, IHE Europe and IHE Japan – Collaborative effort with numerous contributors – Additional partners invited to take part – All work to be released under open source license Will enable testing on demand – Acceptance testing by institutions – Internal testing by vendors – Vendor-to-vendor remote testing via the Internet

IHE International Board IHE Testing and Tools Committee Testing Management Group: -- MIR -- INRIA Testing and Tools Committee Sponsors: -- IHE Europe -- IHE Japan -- IHE North America Contributors: -- NIST -- INRIA -- Canada Health Infoway -- DVTK -- Tiani-Spirit -- Others Collaborators: - CCHIT/MITRE - HITSP - Other standards, certification and health information exchange organizations

Mike G.

Connectathon Scorecard

What happens after the Connectathon? Successful results (specific by IHE profile/actor) are published by the sponsors ( Vendors self-certify, by publishing IHE Integration Statements: Precise and explicit public interoperability commitment for a specific commercial product Only vendors who are successful are entitled to participate in Interoperability Showcase demonstrations: – HIMSS Annual Conference (Mar 1-3, Atlanta) – Canada e-Health Conference (May 30- June 1, Vancouver) – RSNA Annual Conference (Nov 28 – Dec 3, Chicago) – others…

IHE Integration Statement

The value of using Integration Statements in RFP’s Be Brief ? – “The system must support HL7” Be Effective ? – “The system must support the following HL7 V2 messages according to the following 100 pages of specifications” Be Both: – “The system must support IHE Patient ID Cross-reference as a Patient Identifier Source actor” Integration Statement – Version 2.1 of the ACME Enterprise HIS supports IHE Patient ID Cross-referencing as Patient Identifier Source actor Requiring vendors to publish their products’ IHE Integration Statements provides a very effective catalyst in achieving market-driven interoperability

RFP Language (actual example)

Connectathon Tour You will be led by “docents” There will be 4 “stopping points”, illustrating different aspects of the Connectathon – Vendors describing “what is going on now” – Vendors describing “how are we implementing the HITSP interoperability specifications using IHE” – Vendors, describing how the infrastructure components are established and managed – Technical Project Managers, describing how the Connectathon is organized and managed Feel free to observe and listen, but respect the effort that is underway and refrain from disrupting the engineers at work!

Experts you will meet… Steve Moore, MIR Managing the Connectathon Bill Majurski, NIST Connectathon Infrastructure Kevin O’Donnell, Toshiba The vendor experience Lori Forquet Bob Yencha HITSP at the Connectathon

Navigating the Connectathon Floor Key: Technical PM (Steve Moore) HITSP (Bob Yencha) General (Kevin O’Donnell) Infrastructure (Bill Majurski) Key: Technical PM (Steve Moore) HITSP (Bob Yencha) General (Kevin O’Donnell) Infrastructure (Bill Majurski)

Your docents… Chris Carr Lisa Spellman Mike LaRocca Glen Marshall Special “Quality” tour to launch at 4pm for those interested. See Lori Forquet at station F17.

Thanks for joining us! Find out more at ihe.net