[John]

Hall dear EMS Network members,

I would like to share the following challenge which me and my colleagues from around the country face on a daily basis. Furthermore I kindly ask you to share your experience and suggest possible solutions.

Many EHR information systems across Europe store information in different formats creating difficulties in sharing patient data among health providers. Lack of interoperability of electronic health record systems is one of the major obstacles for realizing the social and economic benefits of eHealth in our country. The health information and communication systems and standards currently used in Member States are often incompatible and do not facilitate access to vital information for provision of safe and good quality healthcare across different Member States.

• This discussion was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by  John.

[Andrés]

You are absolutely right, John. Here in Madrid we face the same problem when we try to connect the EHR systems of public hospitals, private hospitals and primary care centers.

Like in other similar systems, I do not think we will ever reach a common standard, but there exists the technological possibility of interchange health information using interoperability standards like HL7,  SNOMED and others.

Ultimately it is an issue that lies in the hands of policy makers. What do you think?

[Sandra]

Dear partners, 

In Madrid Spain (and I guess this problem is also faced in other places) we have a curious situation. Sometimes we have in different hospitals the same EHR provider. The application is the same but still, there’s no interoperability and information cannot be shared among those centers. 

I think our current EHRs were designed with some goals (old goals) like improving patient’s safety and bringing all the information together (older applications had different modules for each service (lab, radiology, pathology…). An EHR development takes years, so now we are “enjoying” this old solutions while we are facing new problems. 

Maybe, now we can  start developing the EHRs of the future, with the developments needed today (Like said in the group description “(1) tracking, an electronic medical record and Med IS into a pan-European, if not larger “Big Data” collective that would enable certain elements of the casualty records to be used to assist a machine learning model (AI) for decision-assist systems, (2) predictive tools and (3) a process of integrated resource management.” and other functionalities like integrated genomic information). 

This is already being done by some companies like Cerner and someday we will receive this improvement (I hope this will happen be soon). Europe should force this companies to follow some standards to pave the way for this interoperability