Concept and implementation of data usage proposal process based on international standards in SMITH

Accessing secondary-use healthcare data in Germany requires contracting with each organization that acts as a data provider. The SMITH Service Platform offers a central access point for scientists, facilitating contracting as part of an integrated data use and access process with several Data Integration Centers (DIC) at once. Process support is realized by a central Business Process Engine (BPE), which manages process definition and process control, combined with a central IHE infrastructure. The use of IHE XDS and IHE XDW profiles enables the exchange of process instance information with multiple distributed visualization and user interaction tools for provided user tasks based on international standards. User task information include structured forms for submitting instructions and results as task input and output for the users, and are synchronized between the shared process instance and the BPE. A reference user interface is also provided with the SMITH Marketplace. In the future, further standardization efforts regarding the structured forms and the use of the IHE XDW profile should be pursued.