The European Commission (EC) has acknowledged the need for eHealth interoperability long time ago. Considering this matter, the eHealth Network (eHN) discussed the need for a common semantic approach towards standardised exchange of health information in the European Union.
In November 2018, the eHN endorsed the work of the Working Group on Common Semantic Strategy (CSS) created within the eHAction Joint Action to come up with a solid proposal for a five-year strategy, to be discussed as a draft in May/June 2019 and to be approved in November 2019.
According to the recent EC Recommendation on European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format (EHRxF, 06/02/2019) healthcare domains such as Patient Summary, ePrescription/eDispensation, Laboratory Requests and Results, Medical Imaging and Reports and Hospital Discharge reports have been identified as base requirement sources for technical interoperability standardisation.
To achieve a Common Semantic Strategy for health information capture, visualization, portability, processing, storage, mark up, annotation, retrieval, accessibility, exchange, secondary use, analytics, reporting, communications, knowledge representation, modelling, decision support and innovative information management, consideration should be given to all semantic requirements that are relevant for health data in the European Union.
In this sense, the Common Semantic Strategy for Health in the European Union (CSS) is aimed to present eHN the work developed by the CSS working group, in the form of an elaborated CSS draft proposal to achieve semantic interoperability at selected use cases for healthcare and health management at the EU level in the coming 5 years.
Here you can access the Common Semantic Strategy for Health in the European Union. Aiming to enrich the strategy, we will be pleased to receive your comments and suggestions through the following Form till the 2nd September 2018.
Thank you so much for your participation!