IHE: a model for driving adoption of standards.

The development of communication standards in healthcare is a major ongoing engineering effort. While there is little doubt that this effort has made possible significant advances in the performance of healthcare information and imaging systems, overall levels of systems interoperability have not improved as dramatically as one might reasonably expect and the cost of implementing effectively integrated systems remains high. The lag between the development of information standards and their implementation in real systems and institutions is a genuine problem in healthcare. This paper describes an ongoing initiative that attempts to bring together healthcare professionals and industry experts to coordinate the implementation of standards in ways that enhance operational efficiency and the quality of patient care.