Title:

A Roadmap for Interoperability of eHealth Systems in Support of COM 356 with Special Emphasis on Semantic Interoperability

Acronym:

RIDE

Project ID:

IST-27065-CA

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Strategic Objectives addressed:

2.4.11 “Integrated biomedical information for better health”

Abstract:

RIDE is a roadmap project for interoperability of eHealth systems leading to recommendations for actions and to preparatory actions at the European level. This roadmap will prepare the ground for future actions as envisioned in the action plan of the eHealth Communication COM 356 by coordinating various efforts on eHealth interoperability in member states and the associated states. Since it is not realistic to expect to have a single universally accepted clinical data model that will be adhered to all over the Europe and that the clinical practice, terminology systems and EHR systems are all a long way from such a complete harmonization; the RIDE project will address the interoperability of eHealth systems with special emphasis on semantic interoperability. In order to create RIDE Roadmap, first the European best practices in providing semantic interoperability for eHealth domain will be assessed and the quantified requirements to create a valid roadmap will be identified. Based on these requirements, the goals, and the economical, legal, financial and technological challenges of the industry for the 21st century for achieving interoperability in eHealth solutions will be elaborated. RIDE will also focus on the limitations of the policies and strategies currently used in deploying interoperable eHealth solutions. A research portal for sharing resources addressing semantic interoperability in eHealth domain will be created and maintained; the key actors and stakeholders will be coordinated around RIDE special interest groups to create a wide consensus at the European level. Through eight RIDE workshops a shared vision for building a Europe-wide semantically interoperable eHealth infrastructure will be created. After assessing the gaps between the “as-is” situation and the “to-be” eHealth vision, the emerging trends and opportunities to achieve the vision statement, the required advances in the state of the art research, technology and standards will be identified.

Objectives:

RIDE is a roadmap project for research and development in interoperability of eHealth systems leading to recommendations for actions and to preparatory actions at the European level. This roadmap will prepare the ground for future actions as envisioned in the action plan of the eHealth Communication COM (2004) 356, namely “eHealth – Making Healthcare Better for European Citizens: An Action Plan for a European e-Health Area” by coordinating various efforts on eHealth interoperability in member states and the associated states.

A number of EHR standards and frameworks have been developed to assist with the interoperability and integration of distributed EHR information. Ideally, all EHR systems would adopt common and systematized hierarchies of component names, use multi-lingual clinical coding systems with perfect cross-mappings and use identical reference models for measurements. However, this has not been realized yet. Not only do a number of international health information standards exist, such as CEN ENV 13606, HL7 and GEHR, but each country, state, division, hospital and vendor usually has their own “standard clinical data model”. In addition, these standards are not completely compatible amongst each other.

It is unrealistic to expect that there will in a short or medium-long time span be a single universally accepted clinical data model that will be adhered to by all of these groups. Clinical practice, terminology systems and EHR systems are all, hence, a long way from such a complete harmonization. Therefore this problem can better be addressed at the semantic interoperability level. Semantic interoperability is the ability for information shared by systems to be understood at the level of formally defined domain concepts so that the information is computer processable by the receiving system. And this is the reason why within the scope of the RIDE project, we will address interoperability of eHealth systems with special emphasis on semantic interoperability with the aim of laying a roadmap by coordinating various efforts in Europe to prepare the ground for future actions as envisioned in the eHealth action plan. It should further be noted that intelligent decision support systems, clinical guidelines and care planning, healthcare business processes, patient identification as well as security and privacy all interact with clinical information systems. Therefore when addressing semantic interoperability in the healthcare domain, we need to pay attention to these issues.

RIDE project will be disseminated through specific Workshops and special sessions in major European Conferences. The workshops will emphasize more on collecting ideas, needs and worries by stakeholders. Each workshop will be well prepared in advance, based on the Roadmapping process being run run in WP2, WP3, and WP4, i.e. the RIDE Roadmapping process will be synchronized with these workshops. During the months preceding each workshop, RIDE project will try to focus mainly on the main theme of that workshop and on its preparation.

Coordinator:

METU

Coordinating person:
Prof. Dr. Asuman DOGAC
E-mail: [email protected]
Fax: +90 312 2101004

Website:

https://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/

Participants: