Projectathon March 2023

Table of Contents

Introduction

The objective of this 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 PS-CA supports several implementation patterns including MHD and a new Canadian National integration profile called CA:FeX. The CA:FeX supports saving and retrieving clinical data to and from a central document repository.

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.

Participants

Vendors and jurisdictions who plan= 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.

Participants of the Projectathon are able to:

• 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 their products;
• Identify dependencies and integration challenges;
• Interact with the jurisdictional teams that will ultimately use their products;
• Ensure quality for the benefit of clinicians and patients;
• Accelerate their 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 were able to 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 the free, 4-day remote testing event from March 6-9, 2023. Gazelle provides 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 was organized by Infoway with support from a world leader organization in the space - IHE Catalyst.

Preparation and Requirements

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

• Host training webinars;
• Develop a FHIR document viewer;
• Deploy an OpenAPI browser for both interface specifications (MHD and CA:FeX);
• Develop clinical scenarios that identified 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.

Participants are required to:

• Register for the event
• Attend training webinars
• Review training materials
• Complete pre-Projectathon and connectivity testing
• Validate test cases and clinical scenarios
• Integrate to Gazelle platform
• Create test records
• Implement APIs
• Prototype FHIR transactions
• Prototype the PS-CA FHIR document
• Prototype export of FHIR document

Interoperability Specifications

In addition to the PS-CA Interoperability Bundle, you may wish to review this diagram which provides a high-level view of relevant Integration Profiles to support the PS-CA project. This view contains a superset of profiles that offer alternatives to exchanging Patient Summaries, depending on Jurisdictional service type and availability. Mandatory and optional capability support is described in the sequence diagrams associated with each Use Case analysis.

Registration 

Participants are required to register for the Projectathon via the Gazelle test platform. The registration period will be open from October 31 - January 15, 2023. A registration webinar was held on January 20, 2022 at 11AM ET. This webinar included an overview of the:

• Scope of the Projectathon, including profiles and use cases 
• Gazelle tool
• Registration in Gazelle
• How the Projectathon will be organized
• Relevant documentation, including specifications and training materials

Click here to register to Gazelle Test Management. 

Pre-Projectathon Preparations

For successful participation in the Projectathon, pre-Projectathon tests and connectivity tests are important. 

The purpose of the Pre-Projectathon tests are to help vendors: 

• Test their IHE profile implementation in their system using the virtual systems in Gazelle to find and fix issues;

• Improve the quality of their tests prior to the Projectathon; and

• Help familiarize themselves with the Gazelle tool prior to the Projectathon, including how to access and use Gazelle simulators to perform the tests.

The Pre-Projectathon Test period will be open from January 15 - February 28, 2023. A Pre-Projectathon Test webinar was held on February 17, 2022 at 11AM ET. During this webinar, participants were shown how to access and use Gazelle in order to perform the tests.

The profiles that were tested during the Projectathon were: 

As part of the pre-Projectathon testing, participants will be required to conduct connectivity testing. The purpose of a Connectivity Testing period is to check, in advance, whether participants' systems are configured and ready to communicate with other vendor systems during the Projectathon event. A Connectivity Testing webinar was held on March 1, 2022 at 11AM ET. 

Tools

Gazelle Testing Platform

The pan-Canadian Interoperability Gazelle Platform is available at https://pancanadianIO.ca. From the home page, you may access the documentation for various support tools, test tools, and utilities, by clicking on the respective PDF icon.

Testing Tools

To support participants' Pre-Projectathon testing, the following tools were developed: 

• An OpenAPI User Interface for the PS-CA APIs, including the MHD and the CA:FeX options
• A PS-CA FHIR Renderer used to visualize PS-CA FHIR bundles provided as JSON structured data

A review of these tools was presented during the Overview of Tools Webinar on February 25, 2022 at 11AM ET. 

Information Sheets and Videos

Below you will find some information to support registration for the Projectathon: 

• How to create your account
• How to register your system for the Projectathon event

Get Support