By IHE, I hope you mean “Integrating the Health Enteprise” effort (www.ihe.net).

Honestly, I didn’t really connect to two concepts together. From my understanding of IHE, the effort is based on a series of use-cases and business processes (i.e., clinical work flows). Once you have a specific clinical process in mind, say cardiac care or imaging, then the collaborative group’s effort goes to examining all of the data transactions and system interfaces to ensure a high degree of certainty that the hardware tested *works* and can be recommended for use by others.

I wasn’t too familiar with XDS (Cross Enterprise Document Sharing), so I looked it up on Google and came across this very interesting link: http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/docs/XDS.html. From the sounds of this description, XDS sounds like it would be related to Latush’s idea about “publish and announce”.

In my opinion, the “publish and announce” model is more of a conceptual model of how information could be shared within the context of a health system with multiple data sources and multiple access points. The IHE XDS effort seems to be focused on the STANDARDS. We have to remember that Latush’s idea is just that – a concept that needs many more details. However, it is one that seems interesting.

To answer your question, I wouldn’t say that the two are related necessarily, but definitely may share some similar ideas. IHE XDS seems to be focused on the development and promotion of standards for data interchange. The “publish and announce” concept is (for today) a thought experiment of applying the model used in the Internet to health care.

Please note that my technical background has limits. While I do understand the technologies at a conceptual level, I am by no means an expert. Someone with either more expertise or experience on these topics (IHE XDS) would be able to give you a more definitive answer.

Thanks for dropping by. Great question!
Hans.

how does the ‘publish and announce’ model align to the IHE XDS architecture?