The group gathers case requirements, identifies available standards, and develops technical guidelines which manufacturers can implement.

[4] IHE integration profiles describe a clinical information need or workflow scenario and document how to use established standards to accomplish it.

[7][8] The United States Department of Veterans Affairs revised its plans in 1999 to adopt IHE recommendations.

IHE technical frameworks are detailed documents which specify the integration profiles and associated actors (systems) and transactions.

[12][13][14][15] The term "connectathon" was coined in the 1980s by Sun Microsystems for similar vendor-neutral interoperability testing of the Network File System protocols and related technologies.