13/03-08   -   Press releases

ICW establishes Global Standards Office: Alexander Ihls campaigns for standardization in the healthcare system

The eHealth specialist InterComponentWare AG (ICW) has established a Global Standards Office. With immediate effect, Alexander Ihls, head of the Global Standards Office, will be responsible for worldwide ICW cooperation with standardization committees and initiatives in the healthcare system and will drive the development of the newly founded Open eHealth Foundation.

Global standards enables widespread use of information technology in the healthcare system, automation of processes and workflow standardization, and thus make it possible to make further improvements medical care. For this reason, ICW is involved in numerous national and international committees such as the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise initiative (IHE), the Continua Alliance or the HL7 user groups and recently founded the Open eHealth Foundation in cooperation with Agfa HealthCare and Sun Microsystems.

Ihls will use his new position to ensure that the ICW solutions are compatible with as many systems from other manufacturers as possible. To do so, ICW’s portfolio of solutions will support even more standards in the future. In addition, ICW will become even more actively involved in the shaping and implementation of national and international standardization developments.

Ihls explains: “I have been involved in all kinds of standardization committees and initiatives over the years. Therefore, it is particularly important to me to apply this knowledge actively to the further development of ICW solutions, in order to be able to contribute to a comprehensive and standardized healthcare network." Ihls has more than 15 years experience in the eHealth sector, which he spent, among others, in management positions at iSOFT Deutschland and MEDOS, and in addition as the IT manager of the St Georg Clinic in Leipzig. He is a member of the “Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) [Association for Information technology] where he was one of its founding board members. Most recently, Ihls was responsible for the strategy and development of the ICW product line ProfessionalGate, providing solutions for connecting hospitals and physicians, the care management of health insurances, and solutions for telemedical projects.