Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) International, an initiative led by healthcare professionals to improve the way computer systems in the industry share information, has announced that its mobile health (mHealth) implementation guide, the Mobile Access to Health Documents (“MHD”) profile has been released for public comment. This guide is available for public comment from IHE.
The Mobile Access to Health Documents implementation guide aims to enable simplified access to health documents for patients and providers using mobile devices. Documents can be delivered to the device using a patient portal, an electronic health record (EHR), a personal health record (PHR), or via a health information exchange (HIE). The guide looks to build on earlier work from IHE enabling exchange of documents in HIEs. It’s currently adopted in numerous countries, including in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NIHN) in the United States.
The guide describes a simplified application programming interface (API) supporting access to health documents, based upon web-accessible resources using RESTful approaches to query for metadata on health documents. It looks to leverage metadata concepts found in earlier IHE and HL7 specifications, but makes it easier to express in web-enabled devices and applications they commonly use.
Among the technologies it is designed for are home health and health monitoring devices, patient kiosks used in hospital registration departments, PHR apps publishing information to an EHR or HIE, patient or provider apps enabling access to or submission of medical history data, and electronic measurement devices accessing patient medical histories from an EHR or HIE.
