AS4 Published in IHE Technical Publication
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On 20. August 2018, the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) Infrastructure Technical Committee published new Technical Framework Supplements including the AS4 message exchange specification.
IHE works to enable seamless and secure access to health information that is usable whenever and wherever needed. IHE is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information around the world, and is a non-profit organisation.
IHE states that:
“The AS4 Specification provides a more robust Asynchronous WS Exchange Option which is attractive for upcoming cross-border ehealth information exchange, such as the European eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure that deploys the XCA, XCPD, and XCDR Profiles and for countries where the adoption of the OASIS AS4 reliable and secure messaging is common when cross-sector (beyond the health sector) applicability is needed.”
AS4 (a conformance profile of the OASIS ebMS 3.0 specification) is typically used for the secure and reliable exchange of documents, attachments to these documents and data in general, and can be used in Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Administration (B2A) and Administration-to-Administration (A2A) exchange contexts. AS4 can be used in virtually every sector or business domain.
Today, AS4 is the message exchange protocol underpinning the eDelivery building block of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF). The IHE technical publication of the AS4 option means that the AS4 profile promoted CEF eDelivery is in-line with IHE's international guidelines.
Visit CEF Digital 2018 to learn more about AS4 and interoperable cross-border data exchange.