Electronic health records interoperability by archetype based contexts

Abstract

This research is focused on the use of contexts of access as a means to provide the interoperability between different Electronic Health Records Systems (EHRS), as mandated by the european standard ISO 13606. In this standard the interoperability is posed in two levels: at structural level, by the so called "reference model", and at logical and conceptual level, by the "archetype model". The interoperability at the first level is quite difficult to achive, due to the huge variability of EHRS implementations. However the use and the needs of access are very similar in most of the hospitals, since the pathological processes, the protocols, the medical specialities, etc. and the information required for each of them is very similar in most of the cases. This is why we propose to define archetypes in the second model of the standard, based on the different contexts of access and the information pertinent to each of them, determined using fuzzy logic. This way when a doctor accesses from a given context to the EHRS of a different hospital, he/she receives the information that this hospital has determined pertinent for that context. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.