Membership in professional associations and task forces

Bundesverband Gesundheits-IT – bvitg e.V., the German Association of Health IT Vendors, represents the interests of the German healthcare IT industry. In order to achieve this goal, the bvitg actively contributes to creating framework conditions that serve as a foundation for IT-based, modern and future-oriented healthcare. The association’s main tasks are the dialogue with all relevant actors in politics and healthcare self-government, the formulation of solutions for urgent healthcare IT issues, networking, the support of junior professionals and career development.

The association represents the leading German healthcare IT providers whose products are being used in up to 90 percent of the different inpatient and outpatient healthcare areas, including rehabilitation, care and social support facilities. More than 70 percent of the member companies operate internationally.

bvitg Service GmbH, a subsidiary of bvitg e. V., organizes “DMEA”, the association’s annual industry congress, and operates the Health IT-Portal.

Numerous and diverse medical specialties create biomedical images. The DICOM Standards Committee exists to create and maintain international standards for the communication of biomedical, diagnostic and therapeutic information in those medical disciplines that use digital images and associated data. The goal of the DICOM Standard is to achieve compatibility and improve workflow efficiency between imaging systems and other information systems in healthcare environments worldwide.

DICOM is a cooperative standard. Connectivity works because producers cooperate in testing via scheduled public demonstrations, over the Internet, and during private test sessions. Every major diagnostic medical-imaging vendor in the world has incorporated the standard into its product design, and most are actively participating in the enhancement of the standard. Most biomedical professional societies throughout the world support and participate in the enhancement of this standard.

Proposed updates to the standard are developed by working groups reporting to the Committee and are approved by the members of the Committee. The Standard is published by the secretariat and are international in scope. The Committee is proactive to assure compatibility with related standards developed by other standards-developing and coordinating bodies such as ANSI, CEN, HL7, IEC, ISO and JIRA.

The goal of the IHE initiative is to stimulate integration of healthcare information resources to improve clinical care. IHE develops and publishes detailed frameworks for implementing established data standards to meet specific healthcare needs, and supports testing, demonstration and educational activities to promote the deployment of these frameworks by vendors and users.

VISUS is member of IHE International and an early member and sponsor of the IHE-Europe regional deployment organization as well as co-founder of the German IHE national deployment organization. VISUS takes part at the European Connectathons continuously. The results can be found on the IHE-Europe Website: www.ihe-europe.net.

MITA is the collective voice of medical imaging equipment and radiopharmaceutical manufacturers, innovators and product developers. It represents companies whose sales comprise more than 90 percent of the global market for medical imaging technology. These technologies include: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), medical X-Ray equipment, computed tomography (CT) scanners, ultrasound, nuclear imaging, radiopharmaceuticals, radiation therapy equipment, and imaging information systems.  Advancements in medical imaging are transforming health care through earlier disease detection, less invasive procedures and more effective treatments. The industry is extremely important to American healthcare and noted for its continual drive for innovation, fast-as-possible product introduction cycles, complex technologies, and multifaceted supply chains.  Individually and collectively, these attributes result in unique concerns as the industry strives toward the goal of providing patients with the safest, most advanced medical imaging currently available.