The Swedish Patient Portal and Its Relation to the National Reference Architecture and the Overall eHealth Infrastructure

Abstract

This chapter presents the evolution of the Swedish patient portal and how it has co-evolved with the eHealth architecture and the overall national eHealth infrastructure. It focuses on the period from 2000 to 2015. The case narrative illustrates the role a broadly and timely agreed upon national reference architecture played for distributed, yet harmonized development of a national eHealth infrastructure and the eHealth innovation made possible by that infrastructure. Our findings support the argument that infrastructure evolvement comes out of the complex interplay between many different actors intertwined in step-by-step cultivation. In Sweden, the infrastructure evolvement is done through the governance of a reference architecture endorsed by all entities contributing to the installed base.