Seventh IHE <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> Connect-a-thon A Great Success IHE Europe held its seventh interoperability testing event known as the IHE Connect-a-thon on 15-20 April in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Berlin</st1:state></st1:place>. The event was organised in parallel with the German EU Presidency’s eHealth Week and the ITeG Congress. Over 300 engineers from 70 companies gathered in the Berlin Messe for six days, testing the interoperability of their healthcare IT systems. More than 1500 tests were carried out, verified by a team of over 30 monitors led by Eric Poiseau, IHE Europe Technical Project Manager. Most European countries were represented this year with vendors originating from over 10 European countries as well from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Canada</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Japan</st1:country-region> and the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">USA</st1:country-region></st1:place>. Many new vendors joined the Connect-a-thon process for the first time, interested by the five domains covered at the Connect-a-thon (infrastructure, radiology, cardiology, patient care coordination and laboratory). Among the hot topics at the Connect-a-thon were document sharing, security, identity management and workflow. The event was run in parallel to the ITeG and eHealth Week, with tours in Dutch, English, French, German and Italian offered throughout the week. The Connect-a-thon provides a unique opportunity for application interoperability testing. Vendors identified and solved many bugs during the event. According to one vendor “the cost of identifying and solving a bug during a Connect-a-thon is about 10 times less than the cost of a bug identified on site”. The results of the event will be published in the Connect-a-thon Results table on the IHE-Europe website at www.ihe-europe.org. Vendors may use IHE Integration Statements to show their products’ compliance with the IHE Integration profiles. This is a clear advantage for vendors when responding to Requests for Proposals from user’s sites In 2008, IHE Europe is planning to hold the Connect-a-thon in <st1:city w:st="on">Oxford</st1:city>, making this the first <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region></st1:place> Connect-a-thon. Press contacts: Eric Poiseau IHE <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> Technical Project Manager Tel: +33 (0)2 99 84 74 58 eric.poiseau@inria.fr Ines Polak IHE <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place> Project Coordinator Tel: +32 (0)2 706 89 63 polak@cocir.org |