A European Union Review of E-Health Standards

The following valuable report appeared a few days ago.

ICT Standards in the Health Sector: Current Situation and Prospects

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

This new study about ICT standards in the health sector by empirica provides a structured overview of eHealth standards development and uptake in a European context, paying special attention to standards for electronic health records. The study was commissioned by the European Commission's Directorate General Enterprise and Industry and explores the current status of ICT health standardisation processes and their future potential. Key findings include the following:

• There is a lack of widely used eHealth standards, resulting in interoperability problems. Many of the conflicting standards are proprietary.
• There is also a lack of the "right" e-health standards. The health sector is in need of effective standards developed specifically for particular applications and concrete cases.
• For health service providers, this situation may imply that their computerised systems remain stand-alone and unable to exchange data with each other in-house or externally. In particular, solutions for electronic health records are often isolated without data exchange and interoperability.

The study also discusses the economic implications of a lack of common standards in the health sector and the ensuing policy implications. It proposes to increasingly involve ICT industry, national governments and ICT users in the development of a more confined and harmonised number of well-developed standards. Considering recent developments in the US, the European Commission and the Member States may be well advised to develop a common strategy and roadmap for e-health standards development.

More here:

http://www.ehealthnews.eu/content/view/1377/62/

Download ICT Standards in the Health Sector: Current Situation and Prospects Study (.pdf, 840 KB).

This is another useful summary of the state of e-Health standardisation that explains, more clearly than most reports, the different actors involved in the area.

This paper can be added to the other reviews of the area:

See the following for a NZ view:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2008/10/health-it-standards-new-zealand-view.html

This article also provides a link to the NEHTA view of the world

Also see the following for a Canadian View:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2008/09/canada-infoway-defines-its-health-it.html

The serious student of the area has a lot of reading to do!

David.