IHE(Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) began in 1998 as the collaborative effort of HIMSS and RSNA to improve interoperability of computer systems in sharing healthcare information. IHE is a multi-year initiative that creates the framework for passing vital health information seamlessly from application to application, system to system, and setting to setting across the entire healthcare enterprise and promotes coordinated use of established standards (DICOM and HL 7) to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. IHE defines highly detailed implementations of these standards in a publicly available document called the IHE technical framework. IHE provides a detailed
process of interoperability testing called the IHE “connectathon” and “demonstrations” to facilitate adoption of this framework by industries of the imaging and information systems. Standards-based integration solutions like those defined in IHE are flexible, durable, easier to implement and less expensive to maintain than proprietary methods.