On demand IHE XDS document registries on the cloud

Abstract

The Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative is an ongoing project aiming to enable true inter-site interoperability in the health IT field. IHE¿s Cross-Referencing Document Sharing for Imaging (XDS-I) integration profile is also becoming a mature concept for sharing medical imaging related documents and several experts point it as the next generation PACS. However, many challenges need to be overcome before healthcare Institutions may share patient¿s clinical records transparently and effortless. Implementing the XDS-I infrastructure is not trivial and requires a significant effort to plan and maintain the IT infrastructure. With the new paradigm of Cloud Computing is now possible to launch software devices on demand and paying accordant to its usage. Hence, healthcare institutions would pay the usage of a state-of-the-art service like other utility services (e.g. electricity, gas), delegating the complex IT management and planning to the cloud provider. This paper presents a framework that allows the launching, configuration, management and monitoring of XDS Document Registries while safeguarding the privacy of the patient¿s sensitive medical information. Furthermore, the framework is a meeting point of the healthcare institutions, creating a favourable environment that might converge in new inter-institutional professional relationships and eventually the creation of new XDS-I Affinity Domains.