More than 250 experts and professionals interested in openEHR from all around the world attended the international conference openEHR – No time to waste: building the lifelong, patient-centric EHR on 6 June. The event was held in the assembly hall at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Barcelona. It was jointly organised by the openEHR Foundation, the Information Systems Area of the Catalan Health Service and the TIC Salut Social Foundation.
Throughout the day, openEHR usage experiences, challenges and opportunities in the public health systems of countries including Scotland, Catalonia, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland and Sweden were also shared together with the industry vision. The conference was sponsored by Better, Vitagroup, Dedalus, MongoDB, Ocean Health Systems, Veratech, IN2, T-Systems and View Next. OpenEHR is the interoperability standard chosen to define the clinical information model for the future of Catalan health care
OpenEHR is the interoperability standard chosen to define the clinical information model for the future of Catalan health care, as explained by the Information Systems Director of the Catalan Health Service, Pol Pérez Sust, during the welcome to the conference. “We want to take a step forward towards semantic interoperability (…). The ultimate goal is to build longitudinal health records for all of the citizens of Catalonia,” said Pérez, after commenting that from now on all public tenders will go in this direction, towards a patient-centric health data model.
Xavier Pastor, the former head of Medical Informatics at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, also took part in the welcome to the conference, stressing that “it is necessary to include new skills in the medical curriculum to incorporate these new technologies into clinical practice” and thus enable staff to interpret the results and the possibilities they offer, and communicate this to patients.
The opening speech was given by Rachel Dunscombe, the Joint Chair of openEHR and Chief Industry Consultant at Dedalus. According to Dunscombe, the third generation of EHR represents a leap forward from a model in which data is used tactically, to another, prepared for the era of artificial intelligence, in which data is used strategically over the coming decades and considered a financial asset. However, she first explained that it would be necessary to eliminate unjustified variations in data to achieve more secure and efficient systems, and to focus the model on personalisation, citizen participation and health care closer to patients’ homes.
Throughout the day, openEHR usage experiences, challenges and opportunities in the public health systems of countries including Scotland, Catalonia, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland and Sweden were also shared together with the industry vision. You can see all the presentations and roundtables at this link:
In the last session of the conference Jordi Piera, the Director of the Digital Health Strategy Office at the Catalan Health Service, presented a project financed with Next Generation funds that he is jointly leading with representatives of Catalonia, Andalusia and Asturias to rethink the Spanish health information model, focusing above all on electronic health records. He concluded with a recipe for attendees to know how to convince their ecosystem of the need to move forward with semantic interoperability: a mature system, strong leadership, involving all stakeholders, being clear about the problems they want to solve, and finally, being courageous!
The conference was sponsored by Better, Vitagroup, Dedalus, MongoDB, Ocean Health Systems, Veratech, IN2, T-Systems and View Next.
