IHE cross-enterprise document sharing for imaging: interoperability testing software.
BACKGROUND
With the deployments of Electronic Health Records (EHR), interoperability testing in healthcare is becoming crucial. EHR enables access to prior diagnostic information in order to assist in health decisions. It is a virtual system that results from the cooperation of several heterogeneous distributed systems. Interoperability between peers is therefore essential. Achieving interoperability requires various types of testing. Implementations need to be tested using software that simulates communication partners, and that provides test data and test plans.


RESULTS
In this paper we describe a software that is used to test systems that are involved in sharing medical images within the EHR. Our software is used as part of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) testing process to test the Cross Enterprise Document Sharing for imaging (XDS-I) integration profile. We describe its architecture and functionalities; we also expose the challenges encountered and discuss the elected design solutions.


CONCLUSIONS
EHR is being deployed in several countries. The EHR infrastructure will be continuously evolving to embrace advances in the information technology domain. Our software is built on a web framework to allow for an easy evolution with web technology. The testing software is publicly available; it can be used by system implementers to test their implementations. It can also be used by site integrators to verify and test the interoperability of systems, or by developers to understand specifications ambiguities, or to resolve implementations difficulties.
Noumeir
Rita
R
Department of Electrical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, University of Quebec, 1100 Notre-Dame West, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 1K3, Canada.
Renaud
Bérubé
B
Department of Electrical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, University of Quebec, 1100 Notre-Dame West, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 1K3, Canada.