Health informatics – Electronic health record communication – Part 5: Interface specification

This document is Part 5 of a 5-part series that sets out a system for communicating about electronic health records (EHRs). This system enables the communication of whole or partial EHRs between EHR systems, or between EHR systems and a centralised EHR data repository. Part 5 specifies the information architecture required for interoperable communications between systems and services that need or provide EHR data. It does not cover the internal architecture or database design of such systems.

In addition to the direct communication of EHRs, the system can also be used for decision support components, personal health applications and devices that need to access or provide EHR data, or the representation of EHR data within a distributed (federated) record system.

This document is primarily intended to support direct care given to identifiable individuals, self-care by individuals and population monitoring systems such as disease registries and public health surveillance. It may also be useful for other purposes such as teaching, clinical audit, administration and reporting, service management, research and epidemiology, which often require the anonymisation or aggregation of individual records.

Main sections:

· Scope

· Normative references

· Terms and definitions

· Conformance

· Interactions

· Interfaces: REQUEST_EHR-EXTRACT, REQUEST_ARCHETYPES, REQUEST_EHR_LOG_EXTRACT

· Term lists