Last year, SIIM (as an IHE sponsoring organization) initiated a program to take top PACS administrators in our field, train them in IHE, and send them to the IHE Connectathon as monitors. The Connectathon is an enormous plugfest that typically attracts over 100 different clinical IT systems from over 60 IT vendors.The program was a profound success, with our monitors helping the vendors test their integration capabilities. They gained more experience in one week than one can typically achieve in many years of clinical practice. In addition, the vendors’ engineering departments greatly appreciated the practical experience provided from our team.
On October 21, 2009, SIIM had its second IHE monitor training session at SIIM headquarters to help prepare the 2010 IHE Monitor Team. The accepted candidates/scholarship recipients are SIIM members: Brian Bialecki, CIIP, Anthony Brockman, CIIP, Ross Filice, MD, Lisa A. Housler, CIIP, Dawn Jakab-Cram RT(R)(M), CIIP, Ken Olbrish, MS, James Roelandt, MS, RT(R)(CT)(MR), CIIP, Ryan Roobian, CIIP and Shawn Wiese, MPA,CIIP. They were trained by Connectathon veterans on how to be a successful monitor and will now participate as monitors at the IHE North America Connectathon to be held January 11-15, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago.
One goal of the training program is to provide monitors with invaluable experience on what it takes to integrate the enterprise. This experience allows them to bring that experience back to their home facility. Nothing beats practical experience in navigating the pitfalls when trying to integrate vendors. It is also an opportunity to network with some of the leading technical experts in the industry from both vendor and academic settings.
“Participating in the IHE Connectathon was truly a great way to take a deep dive into the profiles and build a better understanding of IHE and its processes. Not only will you return with knowledge to help your institution and to push for vendor profile implementation, but you will have the opportunity to pass your insight directly to the vendor engineers developing them.”
— Bill Gregg, PACS Administrator, LSUHSC-Shreveport
The 2009-2010 IHE monitors have experience and leadership in implementing clinical information systems leveraging open standards, experience with DICOM and HL7, and IT infrastructure experience (ITI) with an XML and/or web services. Other monitors also have experience in XDS and PDQ.
