GDPR and Health Personal Data; Tricks and Traps of Compliance.

The GDPR fixes general rules applying to any kind of personal data processing as well as specific rules applying to the processing of special categories of personal data such as health data taking place in the context of scientific research or clinical software development. A short overview of new rules about how to consider where scientific and professional projects include the processing of personal health data, genetic data or biometric data and other kinds of sensitive information whose use is strictly regulated by the GDPR is provided. Some key facts to researchers and developers to adapt their practices and ensure compliance to the EU laws are included.

PARENT joint action: increasing the added value of patient registries in a cross-border setting.

Patient registries are poorly interoperable and as a result data exchange or aggregation across organizations, regions and countries for secondary purposes (i.e. research and public health) is difficult to perform. PARENT Joint Action aims to provide EU Member States with a set of guidelines, recommendations and tools to support setting-up, management and governance of interoperable patient registries, thus helping EU Member States to drive down cost and interoperability risks of patient registries as well as improving secondary us-age of registry data in a cross-border setting.

Implementing healthcare information security: standards can help.

Using widely spread common approaches to systems security in health dedicated controlled environments, a level of awareness, confidence and acceptance of relevant standardisation is evaluated. Patients' information is sensitive, so putting appropriate organisational techniques as well as modern technology in place to secure health information is of paramount importance. Mobile devices are becoming the top priorities in advanced information security planning with healthcare environments being no exception. There are less and less application areas in healthcare without having a need for a mobile functionality which represents an even greater information security challenge. This is also true in emergency treatments, rehabilitation and homecare just to mention a few areas outside hospital controlled environments. Unfortunately quite often traditional unsecured communications principles are still in routine use for communicating sensitive health related information. The security awareness level with users, patients and care professionals is not high enough so potential threats and risks may not be addressed and the respective information security management is therefore weak. Standards like ISO/IEC 27000 ISMS family, the ISO/IEC 27799 information security guidelines in health are often not well known, but together with legislation principles such as HIPAA, they can help.

Electronic medication ordering with integrated drug database and clinical decision support system.

Medication errors have been identified as one of the most important causes of adverse drug events. Computerized physician order-entry (CPOE) systems, coupled with decision support (Medication allergy checking, drug interactions, and dose calculations), are considered to be appropriate solutions for reducing medication errors and standardizing care. It is quite useful if clinical information system (CIS) supports order sets, which help with standardizing care, preventing omission errors, and expediting the ordering process. Order sets are predefined groups of orders pertinent to one or more specific clinical conditions or diagnoses. The article describes how a clinical information system can be used to support medication process (prescribing, ordering, dispensing, administration and monitoring) and offer participating medical teams real time warnings and key information regarding medications and patient status, thus reducing medication errors. Integrated electronic prescribing support system benefits for total parenteral nutrition (TPN) are discussed at the end.

Electronic nursing documentation in a paediatrics hospital: impact on quality of care by using OpenEHR, IHE and HL7.

The acuity of illness of sick children requiring care in hospital is increasing. There are many more children now with disabilities and complicated long term illnesses. Respiratory illness is the commonest cause of morbidity in young children. Nurses have a pivotal role in the anticipation of and/or early identification of the sick child with potential or actual respiratory failure through the assessment and measurement of the child's pattern of breathing, including rate, rhythm and effort. It should also be conducted and interpreted in association with other clinical assessments, for example cardiovascular. Record keeping is an essential part of nursing care because it details the patient journey through the healthcare process. Good quality record keeping can improve the quality of patient care and for this reason nurses must seek to ensure that their documentation practices meet high standards. Poor standards of documentation were a contributory factor in the failure to detect patients who were clinically deteriorating. In this article we searched for evidence whether electronic health records has positive impact on quality of nursing care and present our experiences with electronic nursing documentation in the field of respiratory assessment of the children and young people.

Is there a common background to support better healthcare in Central and South East Europe?

The workshop is proposed by the EFMI WG Health Informatics for Interregional Cooperation with the support of the Electronic Healthcare Records WG as a platform for finding common interests regarding improvement of healthcare services for the Central and East European geographical area. The goal is to assess conformance to international standards in healthcare and to find domains in which each country can provide best practices results of using ICT in support of healthcare.

The importance of timely information in national cancer screening programmes.

The Ministry of Health of Slovenia decided to support the introduction of two new organised screening programmes for cancer, one for breast and the other for colon cancer in 2005. This was an addition to the first, already running, programme for cervical cancer. Two of them are entrusted to the Institute of Oncology while the National CINDI programme takes care of the third one. Besides connection to some external public databases, cancer screening programmes require national Cancer Registry data. High quality and user friendly information support for citizens and medical professionals following doctrinal requirements and possible changes is a must.

Open source and healthcare in Europe - time to put leading edge ideas into practice.

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is a process of software development, a method of licensing and a philosophy. Although FLOSS plays a significant role in several market areas, the impact in the health care arena is still limited. FLOSS is promoted as one of the most effective means for overcoming fragmentation in the health care sector and providing a basis for more efficient, timely and cost effective health care provision. The 2008 European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) Special Topic Conference (STC) explored a range of current and future issues related to FLOSS in healthcare (FLOSS-HC). In particular, there was a focus on health records, ubiquitous computing, knowledge sharing, and current and future applications. Discussions resulted in a list of main barriers and challenges for use of FLOSS-HC. Based on the outputs of this event, the 2004 Open Steps events and subsequent workshops at OSEHC2009 and Med-e-Tel 2009, a four-step strategy has been proposed for FLOSS-HC: 1) a FLOSS-HC inventory; 2) a FLOSS-HC collaboration platform, use case database and knowledge base; 3) a worldwide FLOSS-HC network; and 4) FLOSS-HC dissemination activities. The workshop will further refine this strategy and elaborate avenues for FLOSS-HC from scientific, business and end-user perspectives. To gain acceptance by different stakeholders in the health care industry, different activities have to be conducted in collaboration. The workshop will focus on the scientific challenges in developing methodologies and criteria to support FLOSS-HC in becoming a viable alternative to commercial and proprietary software development and deployment.