IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

IHEa small vendor POV

Lapo BertiniCEO

Rasna Medical Systems

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

Company facts

• Rasna Medical Systems – A company delivering IT solutions to the

health-care community on a B2B basis• dedicated to support radiological routine• producing dedicated components• from image manager to long-term archives, from

review workstations to CD/DVD creators

• Headquarters are in Florence, Italy• Sales offices in Norway and Spain• Operations in Italy, Norway, Spain,

Czech Republic

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

RMS team

• Our team has a long history– Worked as a team for some 16 years– Went through all major changes in

industry• First generation PACS (early 90s)• Coming of connectivity and DICOM (mid

90s)• Coming of integration and IHE (late 90s)

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

How it started

• At the beginning we were plagued with integration problems

• Integration was the key issue– Standards did exist

• Sometimes abused, sometimes misused

– Vendors talked different languages• Total COO was uncontrollable

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

How it started

• For us, being indirect, this created issues– multiple dedicated interfaces

• Each customer provided its own method of interfacing– even variations of exisiting standards

• That meant a lot of effort– hard to predict and impossible to

charge

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

How it started

• Luckily for us a solution was underway– RSNA and HIMSS sat down with a

few vendors in the USA and designed IHE

• Based on existing standards DICOM and HL7

• Allowing inter-vendor testing

– A 5-year mission to boldly go where no man had gone before: real-world integration in healthcare

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

An advantage

• We soon realised how important this was for our business– Adoption of a single “philosophy”– A straight-forward integration with our

customers– Testing integration with our customers

before even having business with them

– Smoother deployments

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

Our IHE history

• First participated at IHE in the USA in 1999– Connect-a-thon and demonstration in

Chicago (RSNA)

• Since 2000 IHE has spread “operations” in Europe– Connect-a-thon and demonstration in

Paris (JFR)

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

Our IHE history

• We’ve taken part in a total of 13 connect-a-thons since 1999– 6 in the USA

• 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

– 7 in Europe• 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,

2006

• In 2002 turned “contributors” to IHE– Contributed substantially to PDI

integration profile

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

What then..

• IHE development is part of our R&D process– Frame of reference– Model

• All pieces of software we developed and tested under IHE are part of marketed products

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

IHE value

• IHE has brought major assets to our business– vendor-neutral integration

• We finally are able to discuss and solve integration – from a “neutral” technical standpoint– …and with inter-vendor testing

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

IHE value

• Effort for custom integration has been eliminated

• Gained ability to test

• Has created a new “philosophy”– Answers can be found in the TF

IHE Europe TutorialGeneva, 10 October 2006

• Thanks for your attention

• Any questions?

www.rasnamedical.com