IHE News - June 2025

Hi all,

please see the following IHE News for June 2025:

Recent Developments in IHE IT Infrastructure (ITI)
The IHE Information Technology Infrastructure (ITI) domain plays a foundational role in global health information exchange. Its specifications are widely adopted and quietly power much of the world’s healthcare interoperability. “Many people don’t realize it, but more than 25 billion transactions annually are based on ITI specifications,” said Aaron Goldmuntz, Managing Director of IHE International. The ITI domain continues to drive progress by evolving its interoperable technology frameworks. We’re pleased to share an overview of recent developments, including updates to trial implementations, public comment releases, and new work items currently in progress. These efforts support seamless data exchange, strengthen healthcare infrastructure, and ultimately contribute to better health outcomes.

New in Trial Implementation
Scheduling
Scheduling is a FHIR-based profile for discovering and booking healthcare appointments. It supports patient and provider use cases through standardized operations to find, hold, and book appointments. Built on the Argonaut 2017 Scheduling specification and FHIR 4.0.1, it enables integration between mobile clients, EMRs, and scheduling systems.
For more details, see the Scheduling Implementation Guide .

Finance and Insurance Service (FAIS)
FAIS is a FHIR-based profile that supports the exchange of financial and insurance information between healthcare providers and payers. It supports workflows such as submitting claims, managing coverage details, and requesting prior authorization. FAIS helps reduce billing complexity and streamlines interactions across healthcare finance systems.
For more details, see the FAIS Implementation Guide .

Aligning DSUB with DSUBm:
To enhance real-time document subscription notifications, IHE ITI has introduced alignments between DSUB (Document Subscription) and DSUBm (Document Subscription for Mobile) profiles. These enhancements ensure greater consistency between traditional and FHIR-based approaches, providing better interoperability across different document-sharing environments.
For more details: see DSUB Extensions .

mCSD Additional Transaction for Feed:
The mCSD profile now includes a new Feed transaction [ITI-130] to support directory updates. This transaction enables real-time synchronization of provider and facility information across healthcare networks. Data Source actors can push Create, Update, and Delete interactions for FHIR resources defined in mCSD—such as Organizations, Locations, and Practitioners—directly to the Directory actor. The transaction supports both single and batch submissions for efficient directory management.
For more information, see the mCSD Implementation Guide .

Change Proposals
ITI Sex and Gender Profiling:
This ensures that systems can accurately represent and exchange gender identity, pronouns, and recorded sex or gender while maintaining interoperability across PDQm, PIXm, PMIR, PDQ, and document-sharing profiles that make use of the "sourcePatientInfo" Slot or Patient resource extensions.
For more details see CP-ITI-1297 in IHE CP Ballot 65 .

XCA Federation of MHDS Community:
This extends Cross-Community Access (XCA) and Cross-Community Patient Discovery (XCPD) to federate Mobile Health Document Sharing (MHDS) communities, allowing for scalable, federated access to patient records across health networks.
For more details see CP-ITI-1322 in IHE CP Ballot 65 .

New Work Items In Development
The ITI domain has also initiated new work items that address interoperability challenges. The Technical Committee is currently developing these items, which will progress over the next several months.
Verifiable Health Links:
Verifiable Health Links (VHL) Profile is an IHE profile of Smart Health Links that adds verifiability to patient-directed health information sharing. It enables a Patient to receive a token which they can present to a recipient. The recipient uses the token to access health content and verify its authenticity and integrity, ensuring the data is trustworthy and has not been tampered with. This approach enhances patient-mediated exchange.
For more information, see the draft Implementation Guide .

XCDR Endpoint Addressing:
This enhancement to Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange (XCDR) introduces a mechanism for including recipient endpoint information in document submissions. While traditional XCDR focuses on delivering content to a community, this update allows the recipient community to route the submission to a specific intended recipient, supporting more scalable and targeted document exchange.
For more information, see the XCDR Endpoint Addressing Proposal .

De-Identification Handbook Update:
The IHE IT Infrastructure domain is updating the IHE De-Identification Handbook to reflect best practices for modern healthcare data de-identification. This includes new content on collaborative pseudonymization and multi-stage de-identification processes, which are especially relevant for AI model development, privacy-preserving analytics, and regulatory compliance.
For more details see the draft De-Identification Handbook .

IHE continues to advance interoperability through the development of specifications and implementation guides. This includes rigorous testing processes to validate conformance, support for cross-enterprise document sharing, and the expansion of profiles that leverage HL7® FHIR® to enable modern, scalable exchange of healthcare data.

IHE coordinates with IHE Catalyst to develop and maintain up-to-date test processes, artifacts, and tools that ensure consistent and reliable implementation of IHE profiles. These resources support structured interoperability testing during events such as the IHE Connectathon. Currently, at the 2025 IHE Connectathon in Vienna, over 20 IT Infrastructure (ITI) profiles will be tested, including FHIR-based workflows and document sharing capabilities. Separate Connectathon events will also be held in 2025 to support testing activities across China, Korea, and Japan, extending IHE’s global reach and commitment to international interoperability.

IHE community involvement is critical to develop these profiles, as it allows stakeholders to directly influence the development process by providing feedback, participating in discussions, and contributing to testing, ensuring the solutions meet real-world needs. IHE encourages vendors, implementers, and healthcare organizations to participate in IHE Connectathons, public comment periods and upcoming technical calls. Stay informed, get involved, and help advance healthcare interoperability!

Thanks!