September 9, 2013 - IHE Europe is delighted to announce that Vienna, Austria is to host the fourteenth annual Connectathon from 7th to 11th April 2014. Vienna is particularly well suited to the logistics of dealing with some 350 IT engineers and in excess of 70 companies from across Europe who will endure the five days of interoperability testing.
The annual IHE Connectathon affords all companies, large and small, the opportunity to test their own products, across a variety of domains including Radiology, Cardiology, Pathology, Patient Care Devices, Patient Care Coordination, Pharmacy, Laboratory, Dental and crucially IT Infrastructure, along with those of their peer vendors.
“The successes of the last three years events in Pisa, Bern and Istanbul will present our organising team quite a challenge” said Jürgen Brandstätter from IHE-Austria; they also successfully hosted the 2009 Connectathon. He added, “But I am sure that with the increasing importance of system interoperability, the experience of our organising team and the professionalism of participating vendors the Connectathon 2014 will be outstanding”.
IHE-Europe is very keen to encourage companies to consider carefully their attendance at the Connectathon, all too often companies feel they have already done enough on IHE. With the addition of new profiles, new vendors entering the market place, the ability to conformance test messages, the increasing skill of the procurement fraternity and the ever increasing level of competition in the e-health market place it is clear that annual attendance with a range of established products and crucially testing new ones is becoming a necessity.
The last two years have seen national, regional and hospital tender procedures demand current independent demonstrations of IHE profile implementation competence by vendors and an increasing number of buyers are turning to the IHE Product Registry (http://product-registry.ihe.net) and Connectathon results pages (http://connectathon-results.ihe.net) which list Connectathon results, as part of their decision making process.
Cor Loef – General Manager of IHE-Services - said “We are seeing an increasing number of vendors wanting to use our testing services on a routine basis to build trust in the deployment of IHE profiles, as organisations realise interoperability testing really does pay off – 5 minutes testing at a Connectathon can save 5 months of in-company effort. I have seen it myself many times, so I encourage all vendors large and small to consider most carefully their portfolio of products - new and established ones - and sign up for Connectathon 2014 – it will give them the best chance of future business success”
For more information on IHE Europe Connectathon 2014 go to http://connectathon2014.ihe-europe.net. Registration opens December 1st 2013: closes 17th January 2014.
About IHE-Services
IHE-Services is the operational unit of IHE-Europe dedicated to the fulfilment of its mission. It is a professional testing team supporting IHE-Europe’s members and beneficiaries that want to build trust in the deployment of IHE profiles in their solutions and projects. Services provided are the development of customised validation and conformance test tools, organisation of test sessions and demonstrations, training and consultancy on implementation of the IHE profiles in beneficiary’s projects / programs. Beneficiaries are national or regional e-health projects, IT users in hospitals or vendors developing new products. IHE-Services offers a unique suite of tools and services used during the connectivity marathons, or Connectathons, worldwide.
About IHE-Europe
The mission of IHE-Europe is to improve patient care by advancing the interoperability of healthcare IT systems and the appropriate sharing of relevant information. Towards that end, IHE-Europe conducts education, testing, demonstrations and other activities promoting the deployment within Europe of systems compliant with the IHE Technical Frameworks developed by IHE International. IHE-Europe also recruits healthcare professionals and solution developers to participate in the development of these specifications and promote their appropriate use in Europe. IHE-Europe interacts with relevant governmental and non-governmental organisations in Europe. It also maintains close contacts with similar initiatives around the world.
About IHE-Austria
Since 2007 it has been IHE Austria’s goal to accelerate the integration of IT- and medical engineering in the Austrian health care sector. IHE Austria plays an important role in the realisation of the Austrian electronic health record (ELGA) and continuously promotes the advantages of eHealth to increase the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare. Its members span the whole health care sector and the executive board consists of representatives of users and vendors. In 2011 IHE Austria started organising the IHE DAY, which has since evolved into being one of the most important symposiums of its kind in the German speaking region.