Management of a Pandemic Based on an openEHR approach

The COVID-19 pandemic has collapsed several national health systems, due to the lack of healthcare professionals and exhaustion of those employed, as well as the lack of interoperability and capacity to restructure their informatic systems. Therefore, the restructuring of institutions at all levels is essential, mainly at the level of their Information Systems. When the COVID-19 pandemic had spread to Portugal in March 2020, with a breakout on the northern region, the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Porto (CHUP) healthcare institution had felt the need to develop and integrate a new approach based on the openEHR standard to interoperate with the institution's existing information systems, with the aim of responding quickly to the pandemic's evolution.