CHAPTER 4 HCM and Digital Files/Portals 41
retrieves it from the correct repository. The information about the correct repository
is provided to the consumer by the registry.
Portals utilize this structure. Patients or external physicians such as referring
physicians have the option of accessing relevant data as long as they have the
authorization to do so. If so, they can use a XDS-enabled viewer and search for
the data using appropriate search parameters. The registry responds to this query.
Using the XDS viewer, the user can find out which data is available and decide
which data needs to be retrieved from the repository. Or the data is retrieved and
can be viewed in a single step.
And what does all of this have to do with the
HCM system?
An HCM system as the central gathering hub for all documents and images
always assumes the role of document source. For good reasons, an HCM system
should also be able to fulfill the tasks of a repository. If it comes with a multi-format
viewer, it is conveniently also a consumer in the XDS sense.
Via these IHE-XDS based interfaces, the HCM system enables the publishing of
the entire data of a healthcare facility in modern cross-institutional digital files,
ideally via a single interface.
By having a multi-format viewer of the HCM system that also integrates the XDS
consumer, users can view not only all their in-house data in the same viewer, but
also external data.