IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) is an international initiative that develops standards-based interoperability frameworks to improve the way healthcare systems share and exchange information. Key Aspects of IHE methodology:

• Focus on Interoperability – Ensures that healthcare IT systems (e.g., EHRs, EMRs, PACS, medical devices, etc) can communicate seamlessly in real life project implementations.
• Use of Existing Standards – Builds upon standards like HL7, DICOM, HL7 FHIR, W3C, ETSI, SNOMED CT and others, to define how systems should implement them in real-world use cases.
• IHE Profiles – Defines specific workflows and interoperability specifications for different healthcare scenarios, based on defining specific sequence diagrams, definitions of actors and transactions

IHE enhances the quality of interoperability specifications by providing support for the testing continumm where

• IHE organises "Connectathons®", where vendors test their software for compliance with IHE profiles
• IHE organizes Projectathons where IHE profiles and other specifications are orchestrated and tested before implementation
• IHE maintains via IHE Catalyst the IHE Gazelle testing platform used in all testing events with more than 30 running installations around the globe.

IHE Profiles play a major role in implementing the European Health Data Space (EHDS) by ensuring standardized EHR interoperability across EU member states. IHE Gazelle is used across the Globe in various National, cross border and regional implementation projects.

IHE Gazelle is an open-source testing suite of connected testing tools designed to:

 Validate healthcare IT systems for compliance with IHE profiles and FHIR implementation guides.

 Ensure interoperability across hospitals, national health systems, and EU-wide platforms like MyHealth@EU.

 Facilitate pre-production and real-world testing through automated and manual test scenarios.

IHE methodologies are supporting the implementation and operation of cross border, national and regional interoperability framework in practices enabling governance of interoperability and ecosystem building that create stable and testable interoperability specifications that can be implemented in practice.

During the presentation examples of use of IHE profiles and IHE test tools will be provided to better understand how all those processes work as one.