XDR

=Background on Australian SMD - IHE XDR Harmonisation=

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IT 14 - 6 Standards Committee has recommended that discussions occur with IHE international to explore the potential for harmonisation of the Australian Technical Specification on Secure Message Delivery (SMD) with IHE XDR (and related profiles) to support web service communication for healthcare.

IHE International Infrastructure Technical Committee and the US National Institute for Standards and Testing have produced a report comparing the two profiles. Subsequent discussion has concluded that the differences initially suspected are less than first believed. IHE has recognised that the need for Australia to support messaging services or intermediaries would add a useful dimension to the existing profile.

DRAFT Issues register XDR/Australian SMD harmonisation

Download a copy of the NEHTA paper on SMD/XDR harmonisation

Download a copy of the NIST report on XDR/SMD harmonisation

IHE Profiles
The location of documentation relating to XDR can be difficult as it is spread across several areas of IHE publication. The key elements are at:


 * 1) [|IHE ITI technical framework 2B - sections 3.4.1 - 3.4.5]
 * 2) [|Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange (XDR)]
 * 3) [|IHE ITI technical Framework - Appendix V - web services].

The Australian SMD also addresses issues covered in other IHE profiles: These will be listed here as they are identified:

http://www.ihe.net/Technical_Framework/upload/IHE_ITI_TF_6-0_Vol2x_FT_2009-08-10.pdf The I[|HE infrastructure profile] contains the core elements reused in other IHE profiles. These profiles are described in the [|IT Infrastructure Technical Framework and its supplements.] The message layer specifications are contained in Appendix V of the above framework.

The following elements of the framework describe the relevant components for harmonisation with Australian SMD.


 * Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange (XDR) – set of messages to convey arbitrary documents along with metadata descriptions of the documents. XDR is a point-to-point version of the larger Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing profile (XDS) also published by IHE.
 * Audit Trail and Node Authentication (ATNA) – use of audit trail to record import and export of patient information and the use of TLS to bi-directionally authenticate communicating partners and encrypt the communications.
 * Web Services for IHE Transactions (Appendix V) – use of Web Services standards as a transport for IHE messages
 * Cross-Enterprise User Assertion (XUA) – use of SAML to carry security assertions
 * Digital Signature (DSG)
 * Consistent Time (CT)

Standards Australia specifications
E-Health Web Services Profiles (document 100133-PDR) E-Health XML Secured Payload Profiles (document 100134-PDR) E-Health Secure Message Delivery (document 100131-PDR)

Background material:

Submission to IT14 SMD review committee