Cross-enterprise search and access to clinical information based on IHE Retrieve Information for Display

One important problem of information systems in healthcare is the localisation and access to electronic patient records across healthcare institute boundaries, especially in an international setting. The Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise initiative proposes the Retrieve Information for Display integration profile that enables a user to retrieve and display patient related documents on systems other than the document keeping systems. The starting point for retrieval is a patient ID that a user must be aware of. The research project ARTEMIS is developing a semantic web based P2P interoperability infrastructure for healthcare information systems. To allow access to patient related documents with the Retrieve Information for Display profile in an ARTEMIS P2P network beyond enterprise boundaries it is inevitable to locate such documents and to retrieve the patient ID first in conformance with access authorisation and privacy regulations. The Patient Identification Protocol established in the ATRTEMIS framework allows such retrieval and thus enables the binding to the Retrieve Information for Display profile.