Validation of a European message standard for electronic health records

A European Standard message for communication of the contents of Electronic Health Records is currently at a late stage in development and is due to be adopted during 1999. This paper reports on the development and content of this message and on current work to clinically validate this message. The validation process involves a new method based on an instantiation of the proposed message in the Extensible Mark-up Language. This method allows the message to be viewed and compared with the same record on the source system.