Roles of Users and Vendors

The IHE International Principles of Governance (“Selected Definitions”) provide definitions for “Users” and “Developers”, where Developers are also frequently termed as vendors:

• User: A Member Organization that is (and/or whose members are) actively involved in using healthcare information technology systemms. The term User should be understood broadly as it includes health professionals, healthcare providing organizations, governmental authorities, national or regional ehealth deployment centers, research institutions etc. 
• Developer: A Member Organization that is actively involved in the development of healthcare information technology systems.
  

Stefan Sauermann, Program Director “Master Medical Engineering & eHealth”

Section “Membership Interest Categories” in the principles of governance describes how IHE assures that any stakeholder has the opportunity for fair and equitable participation without dominance by any single interest. Each IHE International member must choose a single affiliation to one membership interest category, “User”, “Developer” or “General Interest”. IHE Committees may choose to establish membership rules or voting procedures based on interest categories. The IHE International board for example must have two co-chairs, both from the User interest category.

In the IHE process, users and developers (vendors) both contribute to interoperability from their specific viewpoints. 

• Users define and select interoperability challenges, which have arisen in daily clinical work
  
• These are captured carefully in the form of written use cases
• Vendors then define technical specifications in the form of “Profiles”, which provide a solution to the interoperability challenges defined by the users.
  
• Vendors then build software that implements these Profiles, test them e.g. at IHE Connectathons, and finally make conformant products available to users

See for example the IHE IT Infrastructure Technical Framework, Volume 1 (ITI TF-1). Section 10 “Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS.b)” describes document sharing from a user perspective, in a language that can be understood by all stakeholders. The other volumes of the ITI TF then describe how interoperability shall be ensured in all necessary technical detail, from a developer perspective.