[Consent management and workflows for cross-sectoral patient records and teleconsultations]. / Consent Management und Workflows für intersektorale Patientenakten und Telekonsile.

Cross-enterprise electronic patient records are a key element in the design of interoperable medical care networks and process chains. However, the different requirements concerning type, performance and quality assurance of available communication services within the different healthcare sectors still require that the hospitals participate in various secure communication networks which have to be bridged for cross-sectoral communication. Cross-institutional pathways for telemedicine, however, can be mapped both within and across sectoral boundaries via automated process chains using the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) defined integration profile CrossEnterprise Document Sharing (XDS) and associated integration profiles. The provision of medical documents in a cross-institutional patient record outside of defined medical pathways requires differentiated authorization management. In this respect, consent documents according to the IHE APPC (Advanced Patient Privacy Consents) profile enable the documentation of the patient's consent, including information about planned authorized people, document types, period and type of document access allowed. Providing access control to medical documentation by the patients themselves is an essential part of the required focusing of medical services on patients. New interoperability standards optimized for use on mobile devices, such as FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), will enable simplified delivery of patient-centered health records and other medical services on mobile platforms in the future.

[Cross-enterprise interoperability : Challenges and principles for technical implementation]. / Einrichtungsübergreifende Interoperabilität : Herausforderungen und Grundlagen für die technische Umsetzung.

Demographic change, the migration of medical professionals and economic constraints are leading to an increasing specialisation and concentration of resources in the healthcare sector. The digital mapping of cross-enterprise process chains between different medical care levels in turn requires digital networking and syntactical and semantical interoperability in information exchange. Cross-enterprise electronic patient records based on the Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS.b) integration profile defined by the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative are the basis of the digital exchange of medical information between patients and service providers. Syntactical interoperability is ensured by the object definitions in the XDS Affinity domain and the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) document format. Semantical interoperability is achieved by the use of standardized terminology and code systems. Terminology servers make it easy to deploy standard ontologies and translate proprietary code systems. New interoperability standards, e.g. based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), are being developed to facilitate the exchange of structured medical information objects on mobile platforms in the future.

Utilising the FOXS Stack for FAIR Architected Data Access.

A FOXS stack assembles HL7 FHIR, openEHR, IHE XDS and SNOMED CT as an operational clinical data platform to build digital systems. This paper analyses its applicability for FAIR-enabled medical research based on a summary of key principles. It highlights the benefit of the blended approach to operational technology stacks for health systems, and a need for industry standard technologies to enable greater semantic coherence for primary/secondary data use.

Implementation of a cloud-based electronic medical record exchange system in compliance with the integrating healthcare enterprise's cross-enterprise document sharing integration profile.

In 2011, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Taiwan established the National Electronic Medical Record Exchange Center (EEC) to permit the sharing of medical resources among hospitals. This system can presently exchange electronic medical records (EMRs) among hospitals, in the form of medical imaging reports, laboratory test reports, discharge summaries, outpatient records, and outpatient medication records. Hospitals can send or retrieve EMRs over the virtual private network by connecting to the EEC through a gateway. International standards should be adopted in the EEC to allow users with those standards to take advantage of this exchange service. In this study, a cloud-based EMR-exchange prototyping system was implemented on the basis of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise's Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing integration profile and the existing EMR exchange system. RESTful services were used to implement the proposed prototyping system on the Microsoft Azure cloud-computing platform. Four scenarios were created in Microsoft Azure to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed system. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed system successfully completed EMR exchange under the four scenarios created in Microsoft Azure. Additional experiments were conducted to compare the efficiency of the EMR-exchanging mechanisms of the proposed system with those of the existing EEC system. The experimental results suggest that the proposed RESTful service approach is superior to the Simple Object Access Protocol method currently implemented in the EEC system, according to the irrespective response times under the four experimental scenarios.

Implementation methods of medical image sharing for collaborative health care based on IHE XDS-I profile.

IHE XDS-I profile proposes an architecture model for cross-enterprise medical image sharing, but there are only a few clinical implementations reported. Here, we investigate three pilot studies based on the IHE XDS-I profile to see whether we can use this architecture as a foundation for image sharing solutions in a variety of health-care settings. The first pilot study was image sharing for cross-enterprise health care with federated integration, which was implemented in Huadong Hospital and Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital within the Shanghai Shen-Kang Hospital Management Center; the second pilot study was XDS-I-based patient-controlled image sharing solution, which was implemented by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) team in the USA; and the third pilot study was collaborative imaging diagnosis with electronic health-care record integration in regional health care, which was implemented in two districts in Shanghai. In order to support these pilot studies, we designed and developed new image access methods, components, and data models such as RAD-69/WADO hybrid image retrieval, RSNA clearinghouse, and extension of metadata definitions in both the submission set and the cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) registry. We identified several key issues that impact the implementation of XDS-I in practical applications, and conclude that the IHE XDS-I profile is a theoretically good architecture and a useful foundation for medical image sharing solutions across multiple regional health-care providers.

The lower saxony bank of health. rationale, principles, services, organization and architectural framework.

INTRODUCTION: This article is part of a Focus Theme of METHODS of Information in Medicine on Health Record Banking. BACKGROUND: Poor communication of health care information between health care providers (HCP) is still a major problem. One recent approach is the concept of Health Record Banking. OBJECTIVES: With this report we want to introduce the Lower Saxony Bank of Health (LSBH) to the international community. The main objective of this paper is to report and explain: 1) why this organization has been founded, 2) which basic principles have been set, 3) which services will be provided, 4) which type of organization has been chosen, and 5) which architectural framework has been selected. METHODS: To report and discuss how we plan to achieve the intended objectives. RESULTS: The LSBH was founded as an entrepreneurial company, regarding itself as a neutral third-party information broker. The bank does not store medical documents on its central servers but offers a document registry with links to documents stored at participating health care providers. Subject to valid patient consent, the LSBH grants access to these documents to authorized health care providers. To implement our services, we chose the established technical frameworks of the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative using cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS). CONCLUSIONS: Different approaches to establish health information exchange (HIE) are in early stages and some have failed in the past. Health Record Banking can address major challenges described in the literature about HIE. The future will show if our provider-sponsored business model is sustainable. After reaching a stable network, we intend to add additional HCPs, e.g., care homes or ambulance services, to the network.