Quality labelling and certification of electronic health record systems

The Danish Health IT strategy 2003-2007 demands implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) in all Hospitals based on common standards. The aim is to achieve integration and semantic interoperability between different EHR systems in order to support a better communication and coherence between the health care parties. The National Board of Health has developed a common model, which is a prerequisite for the development and implementation of interoperable EHR systems. The adoption of the common EHR model has been promoted and validated through a number of pilot projects in different Hospitals. The Danish EHR Observatory, which has been monitoring the development of EHR in Denmark since 1998, have developed a methodology for Quality labelling and certification of EHR systems. The methodology for certification of EHR systems has been used to validate EHR systems from different vendors to document to which extent the systems are based on the national requirements for EHR.