The International Patient Summary (IPS) is a key standard for global interoperability. Its goal is to create a common foundation for patient summary exchange across borders and ensure the ability to share key information with caregivers whenever and wherever needed. Several nations and international organizations have selected the IPS as a baseline for their summaries, and recently major electronic health record (EHR) and health information technology (IT) vendors have shared their planned implementations. These include Epic, MEDITECH, CommonHealth, Google, Patient Centric Solutions, VeroSource and Verto Health. Like many successful standards, today’s progress has been years in the making.
Seqster has developed a platform that allows patients and their caregivers to collect, visualize, manage and share all of their health data in one app. We aggregate clinical data points across providers chronologically using the industry-standard coding systems that the HL7 community knows all too well.
Achieving healthcare interoperability at any level, by definition, requires at least two parties working together. Achieving it on a global scale requires a shared dedication of the many to the common good. Consider the vision statements of two organizations:
- HL7 International: “A world in which everyone can securely access and use the right health data when and where they need it.”
- IHE International: “Enable seamless and secure access to health information that is usable whenever and wherever needed.”