XIRIS was designed and developed from the "ground up" to support each facility's requirement to comply with HIPAA regulations. However, sofware development companies can only assist in educating their clients in the awareness of HIPAA regulations. It is the sole responsibility of each facility to determine their needs in becoming HIPAA compliant.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)
HIPAA mandated regulations that govern privacy, security, and electronic transactions standards for healthcare information. These regulations have required major changes in how healthcare organizations handle all management of information, including reimbursement, coding, security, and patient records.
Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)
A joint committee led by the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) created a standard method for transmission of medical images and their associated information.
DICOM is the industry standard for transference of radiologic images and other medical information between computers. The DICOM standard also enables digital communication between diagnostic and therapeutic equipment and such connectivity is important to cost-effectiveness in healthcare. DICOM users can provide radiology services within facilities and across geographic regions, gain maximum benefit from existing resources, and keep costs down through compatibility of new equipment and systems. For example, the following can communicate with each other by means of DICOM across an "open-system" network:
- Workstations
- CT scanners
- MR imagers
- Film digitizers
- Shared archives
- Laser printers
- Host computers and mainframes made by multiple vendors and located at one site or many sites
DICOM has allowed for capturing and communicating medical images faster allowing physicians to make diagnoses sooner for a more timely decision on treatment of patients.
Health Level Seven (HL7)
Founded in 1987, HL7 is one of American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare area. Most SDOs produce standards (sometimes called specifications or protocols) for a particular healthcare domain such as pharmacy, medical devices, imaging or insurance (claims processing) transactions. Health Level Seven's domain is clinical and administrative data.
HL7 provides standards for the exchange, management and integration of data that supports clinical patient care and the management, delivery, and evaluation of healthcare services. "Level Seven" refers to the highest level of the International Standards Organization's (ISO) communications model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) - the application level. The application level addresses definition of the data to be exchanged, the timing of the interchange, and the communication of certain errors to the application. The seventh level supports such functions as:
- Security checks
- Participant identification
- Availability checks,
- Exchange mechanism negotiations
- Data exchange structuring
While HL7 focuses on addressing immediate needs, the group continues to dedicate its efforts to ensuring concurrence with other United States and international standards development activities. Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Southern Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom are part of HL7 initiatives.
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)
IHE is an initiative undertaken by medical specialists, other care providers, administrators, and information technology professionals to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. IHE promotes coordinated use of established communications standards such as DICOM and HL7 to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care.
Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively. IHE strengthens the information link between different departments of the enterprise--for example, between referring physicians and consulting physicians and to enable it to function as a single unit in providing optimal clinical care.