Resultmaker is the first software vendor to comply with the new European standard for Electronic Health Records (EHR) – called CEN 13606. The standard is one of two building blocks that in a near future will enable a dramatic increase in the effectiveness of the health sector. Hundreds of lives may be saved every day in Europe alone. Thousands of citizens will avoid error incidents that currently affect 10% of all hospital patients.
The European standard for EHR will enable the free movement of citizens without taking chances on their health if they get ill: If they get ill their health record can be transferred to the foreign country, and the treatment initiated in the foreign country can get back to their home country.
Furthermore the standard makes it possible for different IT systems in the health sector to interoperate, so that a more smooth and consistent treatment and care can be provided across different hospitals, specialist clinics, and general practitioners (family doctors).
A Danish – Polish international effort
The implementation of the standard – named CEN 13606 – was carried out together with the Polish partner SKG (Systemy Komputerowe Główka). SKG used Resultmaker XML FactoryTM to build a set of XML Schemas in compliance with the Reference Model of CEN 13606, and Resultmaker developed an application that can convert a repository of clinical pathways into active guidance applications in Resultmaker Process PlatformTM that are able to export and import their EHR data in XML format complying with these XML Schemas.
10% of citizens get into hospital every year – 10% of them are affected by a treatment error – 10% of them die from the error – 40% of these errors can now be prevented
Resultmaker Process PlatformTM runs on a process model – the Process Matrix – which finally makes it possible to convert the text available in thousands of clinical guidelines and pathways around the World into structured process definitions that can guide clinicians in a patient centric and situation specific manner.
This guidance will dramatically reduce the current 10% error level while leaving the necessary freedom for the clinician to act according to immediate judgment. It is generally acknowledged that 40% of all errors are process errors, meaning that if the guideline or pathways that exist for the area had been known and followed in combination with the data available in the EHR, then the errors would have been prevented. It is acknowledged that 0.4% of all hospital patients die, not due to their disease but due to a process error.
Facts about EHR standards
The European standard – CEN 13606 – has an American equivalent in ANSI HL7. Furthermore these standards are supplemented by initiatives to standardize the terms used inside the EHR, and the main initiative in this area is “SNOMED / CT”, a 300,000 term “ontology” (i.e. a tree structured repository of terms) managed by “International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization”, IHTSDO, based now in Copenhagen, Denmark, after the SNOMED/CT was created by the College of American Pathologists.
Further readings:
Resultmaker Wins Electronic Health Record Project in Poland
Contact:
Kaare Nørgaard, CEO