My record for me to use and share
Last week I had a holiday, walking in the hills of Yorkshire – dales and moors. The week before had been a good one. I finally have access to my GP record using the NHS App. It also includes my COVID 19 vaccination passport which, should I need to travel, I can share. It turns out getting access to my GP record was a challenge for both me and my general practice for reasons the practice are kindly investigating. Its also proven difficult for friends and family to access their records. It is, however, great to see how uptake of the NHS App is taking off.
While I was walking, a significant agreement was quietly shared. Last week in Oxford, after the G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting, a communique was released. Tucked away in the digital health section were some significant commitments, including one, covering just two sentences, which should be transformational if delivered.
We commit to work towards adopting a standardised minimum health dataset for patients’ health information, including through the International Patient Summary (IPS) standard, with the shared objectives of facilitating health interoperability within and between countries, developing internationally shared principles for enabling patient access to health data, based on the principle of informed explicit consent or patient permission and in keeping with countries’ and regional existing legislative frameworks; and facilitating and promoting the use of open standards for international health data to encourage the widest possible adoption of standards and greater interoperability.
G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting, communique, Oxford, 4 June, 2021
and an agreed approach …
To achieve this goal, we will work with the Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP) as they are already advancing IPS efforts.
G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting, communique, Oxford, 4 June, 2021
Just think about that a moment – the worlds wealthiest nations committing to enabling patient access to health data, based on the principle of informed explicit consent or patient permission. Just imagine you need urgent or planned healthcare and can to share your care record wherever you are with whomever you choose. That is within and between countries so could be one of the many Japanese tourists visiting my local village of Haworth, or me going on holiday on the North Yorkshire Moors and sharing my full care record with a local hospital in Scarborough.
How can this be possible?
The “secret sauce” is the international standard BS ISO 27269:2021 Health informatics — International patient summary. This replaces the earlier European Standard BS EN 17269:2021 Health informatics — International patient summary.
The standard defines the core data set for a patient summary document that supports continuity of care for a person and coordination of their healthcare. It is specifically aimed at supporting the use case’ scenario for ‘unplanned, cross border care’ and is intended to be an international patient summary (IPS). Whilst the data set is minimal and non-exhaustive, it provides a robust, well-defined core set of data items. The tight focus on this use case also enables the IPS to be used in planned care. This means that both unplanned and planned care can be supported by this data set within local and national contexts, thereby increasing its utility and value.
The standard alone isn’t enough though – somehow the record needs to be accessible to the patient to share. To this end HL7 have designed an approach to using their Clinical Document Architecture (CDA2) and Fast Healthcare Resources (FHIR). SNOMED International have released their “International Patient Summary (IPS) Free set” consists of more than 8,000 terms for use in implementations of the HL7 CDA R2 and FHIR IPS Implementation guides word-wide.
There is still much to do, but the G7 Health Ministers have opened the gate to allow the world to move forward. Lets hope the other nations follow in their footsteps.
This was first published on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-record-me-use-share-nicholas-oughtibridge