IHE IT Infrastructure White Paper: HIE Security and Privacy Through IHE

Regions around the globe are looking to link healthcare practices together into Health Information Exchanges (HIE). A Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) is a set of healthcare entities that are cooperating to share healthcare information about common patients. The IHE has proposed that a basic method of providing a HIE is through an infrastructure that 35 allows for the sharing of clinical documents about a patient in a way that allows for long term use. This infrastructure is made up of a family of Profiles centered on the Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) Profile. This paper will discusses how an HIE that leverages IHE profiles can protect patient privacy and information security.