ASTRO: Nine vendors pass third IHE-RO Connectathon
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has announced that nine radiation oncology equipment manufacturers passed at least one portion of interoperability at its third Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise–Radiation Oncology (IHE-RO) Connectathon.
IHE-RO is a segment of IHE program, an initiative that works to support the sharing of vital health information across multiple healthcare enterprises, said the Fairfax, Va.-based ASTRO.
At the Connectathon, each vendor--Accuray, BrainLAB, Elekta, GE Healthcare, Nucletron, Philips Healthcare, Tomotherapy, Siemens Healthcare, Varian Medical Systems and MIMVista--tested the interoperability of their systems against “Advanced RT Objects Interoperability” and “Integrated Positioning and Delivery Workflow,” two new profiles created in 2009 by IHE-RO as well as the 2008 profile, “Multimodality Image Registration for Radiation Oncology,” and the 2007 profile, “Basic RT Objects.”
The vendors also had their equipment tested by the IHE-RO test suite to determine the base functionality of the products prior to the Connectathon.
“The Connectathon is becoming more and more challenging each year because we are getting into some very advanced issues that have been plaguing physicians for years,” said Bruce Curran, IHE-RO planning committee member and technical committee co-chair. “By solving them across multiple vendors during profile development and resolving remaining issues during the Connectathon, we are creating solutions more effectively than if these problems had to be solved in a clinic. This in turn provides benefits to patients sooner, which is the ultimate goal of the project.”
IHE-RO is a segment of IHE program, an initiative that works to support the sharing of vital health information across multiple healthcare enterprises, said the Fairfax, Va.-based ASTRO.
At the Connectathon, each vendor--Accuray, BrainLAB, Elekta, GE Healthcare, Nucletron, Philips Healthcare, Tomotherapy, Siemens Healthcare, Varian Medical Systems and MIMVista--tested the interoperability of their systems against “Advanced RT Objects Interoperability” and “Integrated Positioning and Delivery Workflow,” two new profiles created in 2009 by IHE-RO as well as the 2008 profile, “Multimodality Image Registration for Radiation Oncology,” and the 2007 profile, “Basic RT Objects.”
The vendors also had their equipment tested by the IHE-RO test suite to determine the base functionality of the products prior to the Connectathon.
“The Connectathon is becoming more and more challenging each year because we are getting into some very advanced issues that have been plaguing physicians for years,” said Bruce Curran, IHE-RO planning committee member and technical committee co-chair. “By solving them across multiple vendors during profile development and resolving remaining issues during the Connectathon, we are creating solutions more effectively than if these problems had to be solved in a clinic. This in turn provides benefits to patients sooner, which is the ultimate goal of the project.”