S 5.6 Integrating Cardiology Information Systems: un update of concepts

R. Brennecke (Mainz D)

Scope of INCIS'96 and the INCIS Web Home Page

This is the third workshop on Integrating Cardiology Information Systems. The participants of the first meeting defined the principal goals of finding pathways for integrating
• all medically relevant types of data (text, digital video, digital hemodynamic signals)
• and the cardiology information systems of all industrial vendors.
During this first meeting in 1992 the participants from the cardiology community and from industry recognized that for achieving this goal it was necessary:
• to find consensus on the user requirements
• to find consensus between users, industry and standardization committees
• to publish results in the form of user recommendations and of technical standards.
In the four years between 1992 and 1996 these consensus activities have become a continuous process. The annual congresses of the European and of the American societies of cardiology (ESC, ACC, ASE) and the meetings of the relevant standardization organizations (CEN, NEMA) have been the primary forum for these continued activities. Task forces of ACC and ESC (DIGICARE) have been founded in 1992 and they have tightly cooperated with industry in this endeavor.

The second INCIS workshop in 1994 accordingly focussed on standardization issues. Cardiac (angio and echo) application profiles within the MEDICOM/ DICOM standard for digital image communication in medicine have been the primary result.

After 1994, the main focus had to remain on the many complex details in the standardization domain. Pilot projects such as Disk Demos and the Data Compression Viability Study were organized and products based on this standard are presently reaching the market place. In addition, however, some unforeseen fundamental developments have happened since 1994. These are again pointing to integration as the primary goals of the INCIS activities. These developments include:

• the public discussion and euphoria concerning the Information Society and Information Economy (including the large-scale medical enterprise)
• the Internet and Web 'landslide': a computer network that is integrating the information from the networks of the world while offering at the same time a basic level of integration for multimedia data (HTML Hypertext Markup Language).
The program of this 1996 workshop is reflecting both the events in the area of our special interest and the events on a global scale. Accordingly, one large group of presentations will focus on MEDICOM/ DICOM standardization activities and the experience with corresponding pilot applications. In the same area, the standardization of cardiac data sets as begun at INCIS'92 and '94 is now also gaining momentum. The other large group of presentations will deal with the challenge of using the Internet/ Web for professional communication in cardiology.

Extrapolating these experiences from 1992 to 1996 into the future, we see that the principal INCIS goal of integrating information is becoming more accepted every day. The basis for integration in turn is provided by standardization as promoted in the recent years. The final step might be located even beyond the task of integration and it is presently just becoming visible: computer-supported cooperation. Presentations on Shared Care at this workshop are among the best examples of this future direction. Thus, the need for technical integration is only one factor and quality of care becomes more and more visible as another factor driving developments. The INCIS Web Home Page will be dedicated to standardization, integration and cooperation for an improved quality of care and we want to offer it as a continuous forum starting April 1996.

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