Balancing centralised and decentralised EHR approaches to manage standardisation

Balancing regional and national electronic health record (EHR) approaches requires cooperation between clinical and technical experts at different organisational levels. Bridging is necessary to achieve interoperability between regional EHR systems, without neglecting the clinical usefulness. This study has investigated the approaches chosen in modelling the clinical content of EHRs in two out of five regions in Denmark. Based on the knowledge obtained in these studies a 'clinical content format' was developed to facilitate the work of the regions, where the clinical content of EHR systems is modelled. The objective of the clinical content format is to enable share and reuse across organisations, furthermore an objective is to gradually introduce standards. The results of the first iteration of a 'clinical content format' are presented and future adjustments are discussed based on the results.