International Patient Summary

Full Title

The International Patient Summary (IPS) is a standard that facilitates clinical data sharing by patients and clinicians both within and across borders.

Context

Tthe IPS aims to enhance cross-border data exchange, allowing patients and clinicians to share critical health information seamlessly across different countries and healthcare systems. It has emerged from collaboration across multiple standards development organizations (SDOs), including **HL7 International**, the **European Committee for Standardization (CEN)**, **Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)**, **ISO**, and **SNOMED International**.

MyHealth@EU Patient Summary (currently CDA) is an implementation. X-panDH PS (FHIR) is a proof of concept for feeding into the next EU project. EEHRxF will be a common European specification based on IPS (being created unde Xt-EHR project) X-Share will create a series of real-life implementations based on EEHRxF. MyHealth@EU future PS implementation will be on FHIR and based on EEHRxF.

It is not clear how to keep EU/national level "public" discussions of Patient Summary -topic on the right track and NOT mixing these things up. (2024-03)

1. Background on the IPS**:
   1. The IPS ecosystem includes standards developed by various SDOs.
   2. HL7 work groups have created two implementable specifications of the IPS based on the **Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)** and **Fast Healthcare Interoperability (FHIR)** standards.
   3. These specifications cover essential clinical data domains such as allergies, medications, and problems.
   4. SNOMED International provides a subset of SNOMED CT codes (the Global Patient Set) for use within the IPS or other specifications.
   5. The IPS has gained traction through efforts by organizations like the **World Health Organization (WHO)**, the **Global Digital Health Partnership**, and the **G7 Health Ministers**.
2. IPS Maturity and Adoption**:
   1. The IPS is still in its early adoption phase.
   2. Within European nations participating in the **MyHealth@EU** (formerly eHDSI) project, the exchange of **CDA Patient Summaries** compliant with the IPS datasets has reached production usage.
   3. While not all nations have fully migrated to the HL7 CDA IPS, references to it are now included in 2021 guidance¹.


Source: Conversation with Bing, 3/17/2024

(1) Advancing the International Patient Summary. https://blog.hl7.org/advancing-the-international-patient-summary-ips.
(2) GUIDELINES ON THE EUROPEAN PATIENT SUMMARY DATASET. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/332849/Eurohealth-20-1-25-28-eng.pdf?sequence=1.
(3) (PDF) Interoperability standards enabling cross-border patient summary .... https://www.academia.edu/71730561/Interoperability_standards_enabling_cross_border_patient_summary_exchange.
(4) Summary Report: Cross-Border Healthcare - eu-patient.eu. https://www.eu-patient.eu/globalassets/policy/cross-borderhealthcare/cbhc-summary-report-final_external.pdf.