IHE Change Proposals

Overview

IHE Change Proposals (CPs) are individual Microsoft Word documents that describe in detail the text changes required of an existing IHE document (Technical Framework, Trial Implementation Supplement) to correct an outright error, clarify an issue or perhaps add new functionality to an existing profile, actor or transaction. Each IHE domain manages the inbound proposals, completes the CP documents to include the appropriate deletions and additions to existing documents, publishes the CP documents and incorporates those changes into the existing Final Text or Trial Implementation supplements.

Final Text and Trial Implementation supplements are published annually (schedule depends on the domain), while Change Proposal documents can be published at any time during the year. For purposes of Connectathon testing, Connectathon participants are responsible for the updates documented in the Change Proposal documents when the Change Proposal documents are published. This allows participants at the Connectathon events to use the latest updates to existing IHE profiles.

One caveat to the paragraph above is that there does need to be a realistic cutoff date for the publication of Change Proposals. A Connectathon participant cannot be expected to modify a Connectathon system to meet a Change Proposal that is published by a committee one week prior to the Connectathon.

Change Proposal Cutoff Date

Participants in January Connectathons in North America will be responsible for CP documents published by committees on or before November the prior year.

Participants in the April Connectathons in Europe are responsible for CP documents published on or before January prior to the event.

See the table below for links to Change Proposal documents.

In the rare case that the Technical Project Manager for a domain determines that a specific Change Proposal is critical for successful testing of an IHE Integraton Profile or Trial Implementation Supplement, that Technical Project Manager will track that Change Proposal and communicate directly with the Connectathon participants regarding that issue. This is indeed a rare event. There are times that issues are found during the pre-Connectathon testing, and the Technical Project Manager for that domain will work with the appropriate Technical Committee to evaluate the issue and document a path to address the issue.

List of Resources

IHE is working on a unified process for managing Change Proposals, but that documentation process is still under development. The table below lists the domains that are offered for testing for NA and EU Connectathons. The second column in the table below indicates the domains that have links to their Change Proposal documents on IHE's main Technical Frameworks page: http://www.ihe.net/Technical_Frameworks.