PS-CA Prototyping and Validation

Definition

A Projectathon is an important step and a best-practice approach in testing and validation of a specification package, where implementers collaborate to test their solutions using methodology and tools that accelerate interoperability. A Projectathon provides an opportunity for participants to test their systems among themselves and against a reference environment. It is also an opportunity to collaborate among peers to enable hands-on knowledge exchange.

Focus

The focus of the first pan-Canadian Projectathon is to test and improve the quality of the pan-Canadian Patient Summary Interoperability Specifications (PS-CA Specifications) to ensure they are implementable, testable and meet expectations. The aims of the Projectathon are to identify potential issues in the basic specifications, give implementers a chance to test their implementations in live environments, and strengthen implementation guidelines and standards in the health sector.

Infoway views this as a preliminary event before any conformity assessment, quality label or certification process.

Participation

Vendors and jurisdictions who are planning to implement the PS-CA Specifications are invited to participate in the Projectathon. In addition, any interested party that has Patient Summaries in their future roadmap are welcome to participate.

By participating in the Projectathon, you will:

• Have the opportunity to be an early adopter and an influencer of the final specification;
• Gain a better understanding of the expected integration patterns for your products;
• Identify dependencies and integration challenges;
• Interact with the jurisdictional teams that will ultimately use your products;
• Ensure quality for the benefit of clinicians and patients;
• Accelerate your readiness for implementation;
• Save time and money through a harmonized pan-Canadian approach;
• Get familiar with the validation/testing processes and tools; and
• Help achieve our collective goals of developing a quality national standard.

Additionally, through participation in the Projectathon, participants can prepare for practical applications of the PS-CA Specifications.

Approach

A suite of virtual tools, collectively referred to as Gazelle, will be deployed to support a free, 3-day remote testing event in March 2022. Gazelle provides jurisdictions and vendors an opportunity to validate the role they will be playing in an ecosystem and ensure they are able to satisfy the interoperability requirements. Furthermore, Gazelle offers several self-serve, self-test and innovation opportunities for jurisdictions and vendors to test their alignment to the represented integration profiles.

The Projectathon event is organized by Infoway with support from a world leader organization in the space - IHE Catalyst.

Scope

Infoway will stand up a virtualized instance of the Gazelle platform and collaborate to define clinical scenarios for both EMR and HIS solutions, including “create and submit a summary” and “query and retrieve a published summary”.

Provincial solutions will act as repositories and Patient Summary content will consist of the Header, Medication Summary, Allergies & Intolerances, Problem List, History of Procedures, and Past History of Illness.

Preparation and Requirements

In preparation for the Projectathon, Infoway and IHE Catalyst will:

• Host three training webinars;
• Develop a FHIR document viewer;
• Deploy an OpenAPI browser for both interface specifications (MHD and CA:FeX);
• Work with participants to develop a clinical scenario that will identify the required test data for the Projectathon;
• Offer helpdesk support prior to and during the Projectathon; and
• Publish a report on learnings after the Projectathon.

Participant requirements for participation in the Projectathon include:

Important Dates and Events