ICT standards in the health sector: current situation and ... - empirica

ICT standards in the health sectorEconomic implicationsBusiness analysts assess the market for health information systems in Europe as beinghuge and largely untapped. However, interoperability problems may be one reason forhospitals and other health service providers to hold off investments in ICT. Consequently,growth in companies supplying ICT for the health sector is smaller than it could be.Furthermore, economic growth related to standardisation may accrue predominantly inthe country or part of the world where a standard has been developed (section 4.1).Further economic implications of a lack of commonly used e-health standards are lostopportunities for cost reduction and compromised quality of healthcare. As regards costs,due to a lack of commonly used standards, opportunities for streamlining health serviceprocesses and for delivering activity data for more effective accounting and controllingare lost. As regards health care quality, a lack of information systems integration mayprolong physicians’ and nurses’ access to patient data (section 4.1).Policy implicationsIn January 2008, the US Department of Health and Human Services recognised certaininteroperability standards for health ICT which federal agencies have to include inprocurement specifications for certain fields of health. This could be a step towardsmandatory use of a confined number of standards for principal e-health applications.Such a regulation by the US government could have considerable impacts in the EU. Inorder to prevent unfavourable developments, the EC and the Member States may be welladvised to develop a common strategy and roadmap for e-health standards development.A solution for the interoperability challenge in e-health may be the common use of a moreconfined and harmonised number of well-developed standards. Related efforts by the ECand national governments should involve the following objectives (section 4.2.1):Promote an EU-wide agreement on priority standards. Promote an increaseduptake of prominent standards, for example those developed by ISO, CEN andHL7, and thereby increase the network benefits of standards use.Promote the development of standards in applications areas in which there iscurrently a lack of well-defined standards.Promoting the harmonisation of key standards that conflict with each other.In order to achieve these objectives, the following means may be used (section 4.2.2):The collaboration initiative of ISO, CEN and HL7 should be strengthened.Stronger involvement of industry and user groups in the standardisation process byensuring that the outcome of the standardisation efforts are highly relevant for them.Member States and their national Competent Authorities should become morecommitted to international e-health standardisation.The EC and Member States should implement a roadmap for further development of e-health standards (section 4.2.3). The large-scale pilots for patient summaries and e-prescribing planned to take place in Member States should be stepwise extended to otherkey applications. In parallel it will be mandatory to also develop standards for a Europeane-health infrastructure.8