This European Prestandard specifies messages that enable exchange of electronic healthcare record information between healthcare parties responsible for the provision of clinical care to an individual patient. These messages allow information from an electronic healthcare record held by one health professional to be sent to another health professional.
The messages specified by this European Prestandard can be used to convey:
- a complete copy of a patient's record as stored in one information system;
- parts of a patient's record that form a logically sound extract or summary of that record;
- parts of a patient's record used for updating a parallel record on another system.
The primary purpose of these messages is to support the provision of care to individual patients. The availability of consistent, continuing clinical care, when and where it is needed, requires appropriate and unambiguous communication between clinical professionals. The messages specified by this European Prestandard are designed to meet this requirement by enabling users of different clinical information systems to exchange electronic healthcare record information. Implementation of these messages will therefore assist the maintenance of timely and appropriate patient records.