MANDALUYONG, Philippines – The Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia (SIL-Asia), with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), hosted a workshop with Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) on 7-10 May 2018. IHE is an initiative by healthcare professionals to improve health information exchange through the coordinated use of established health IT standards, with the goal of addressing specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care.

During the four-day workshop, Jürgen Brandstätter, co-chair of IHE Europe and board member of IHE International, gave an introduction to IHE, including insights, strategies, common blueprints, and a series of lectures on how to write use cases and interoperability specifications. Integration between IHE and FHIR was also one of the subjects of interest during the workshop.

The workshop included sessions on the health information system needs of member-countries, specifically Vietnam, as well as ADB learnings from other countries such as Tonga, Armenia, and Tajikistan.

The workshop also held a session on IHE’s IT Infrastructure Technical Framework. It also served as an avenue for strategy planning on SIL-Asia’s health information exchange demo for the forthcoming AeHIN General Meeting in October. It also included planning on how SIL-Asia can be established as an IHE Center for Excellence in the future.

For more information, SIL-Asia’s briefer on IHE is available here.