"CEN/ISSS has on the request of the European Commission started a new investigation of standards requirements in the area of "eHealth", in connection with the eEurope 2005 action line and in support of the eHealth Policies of the member states. An open CEN/ISSS Focus Group was created to prepare a report and recommendations on these issues."

Health informatics standards are essential to achieve the goals of eHealth in Europe for:

• "interoperability between systems and patient information exchange between health organisations;
• market efficiency by providing increased understanding between all players in that market through a common technical framework and terminology for eHealth application development, procurement and implementation;
• meeting nonfunctional requirements to ensure safety, security and legal requirements e.g. protecting the privacy of the citizens;
• establishing a representative set of multinational interoperable, coordinated and open eHealth services based on a common business and service architecture
• managing eHealth services."

• Establish an Interoperability Platform as the basis for implementing a further set of recommendations:
• Improve access to records
• Reduce medication-related errors and e-prescribing
• Control the safety of health informatics products
• Produce a standard on metadata for knowledge resources and guidelines ensuring quality of health information on web sites
• Standard workflow models and clinical pathways
• Electronic transfer of prescriptions
• Information exchange to support interworking and the mobile citizen
• Tools for mapping between case mix groupers for diagnoses and procedures.
• Define priority indicators of quality of care,
• Improve availability of standards
• Move towards an international multilingual reference terminology
• Moves towards a secure information infrastructure.

"The objectives of the National Health Information Standards Plan for Australia are:

1. To set out the processes and structures necessary to promote health information standards in Australia Ñ namely the decision-making, working and funding arrangements.
2. To identify those policy themes driving national standards development, using as the basis the three key policy themes underpinning Health Online, namely:
   • empowering consumers and communities for better health;
   • better management of clinical information to support clinical care; and
   • using information to build a more efficient and effective health care system.
3. To propose a comprehensive plan of action for progressing standards work in these areas (including determining what work needs to be progressed and by whom).
4. To establish a responsive mechanism through which emerging standards are identified, prioritised and actioned." (P15).

"The scope of [the report] is confined to requirements for:

• information and data standards; and
• technical standards.

1. The development of a national approach to improving consumer access to health information (and thereby empowering consumers and communities for better health) through:
   • the use of information and communication technologies.
2. The better management of clinical information to support care through:
   • the development of a national framework for the use of electronic health records for service-delivery purposes to provide a means of improving the efficiency, safety and quality of health care;
   • the expanded development of decision-support services; and
   • the development of strategies to expand the appropriate and cost-effective use of telehealth services.
3. Using information to build a more efficient and effective health care system by:
   • facilitating the greater take up of e-commerce to produce a more efficient health system. In particular, this involves:
     • advancing the use of electronic supply chains;
     • increasing the level of electronic claiming for Medicare and pharmaceutical subsidies; and
     • implementing electronic billing solutions.
   • developing information practices to improve the availability of health information for research, policy and planning purposes to provide a more efficient and effective health system."

" ... Today, the greatest impediment to the adoption of information technology is the lack of complete and comprehensive standards for patient medical record information.

" The National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) has identified several major impediments to improving healthcare quality and cost and achieving administrative simplification, including: