Integrating Healthcare Enterprise-Radiation Oncology Initiatives for Enhancing Safety and Quality: A Report on the Interoperability Profiles and Vendor Scoring System.

Abstract

The Integrating Healthcare Enterprise-Radiation Oncology (IHE-RO) initiative provides standardized profiles to address interoperability challenges in radiation oncology (RO), such as data exchange, system compatibility, and workflow integration across treatment planning, delivery, imaging, and documentation products. By defining clear specifications based on medical communication standards for data content and network transactions for specific clinical scenarios, the profiles minimize errors caused by manual data handling, enhance patient safety, and improve clinical efficiency. Seamless interoperability enables robust and standardized quality assurance, consistent documentation, and the adaptability required for complex treatment techniques, such as linac-based stereotactic radiation therapy with multiple image guidance systems. The adoption of IHE-RO profiles mandates collaboration among products from various vendors, ensures compliance with international standards, and demonstrates a vendor's commitment to safe, high-quality, patient-centered care in modern RO. Promoting awareness of IHE-RO profiles and encouraging vendor adoption are critical in ensuring continued effectiveness and efficiency in the development of these profiles in RO. This paper summarizes the active IHE-RO profiles and their applications, elucidates the challenges related to the current level of vendor participation, emphasizes the need for greater community awareness, and proposes an interoperability scoring system when evaluating different products.