ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Telemedicine systems are today already used in a variety of areas to improve patient care. The lack of standardization in those solutions creates a lack of interoperability of the systems. Internationally accepted standards can help to solve the lack of system interoperability. With Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), a worldwide initiative of users and vendors is working on the use of defined standards for specific use cases by describing those use cases in so called IHE Profiles. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this work is to determine how telemedicine applications can be implemented using IHE profiles. METHODS: Based on a literature review, exemplary telemedicine applications are described and technical abilities of IHE Profiles are evaluated. These IHE Profiles are examined for their usability and are then evaluated in exemplary telemedicine application architectures. RESULTS: There are IHE Profiles which can be identified as being useful for intersectoral patient records (e.g. PEHR at Heidelberg), as well as for point to point communication where no patient record is involved. In the area of patient records, the IHE Profile "Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS)" is often used. The point to point communication can be supported using the IHE "Cross-Enterprise Document Media Interchange (XDM)". IHE-based telemedicine applications offer caregivers the possibility to be informed about their patients using data from intersectoral patient records, but also there are possible savings by reusing the standardized interfaces in other scenarios.
