In April 2015, the Joint Initiative Council (JIC), a collaborative of 8 international digital health standards development organisations, discussed its strategic direction and agreed upon the following goal:
The JIC will contribute to better global patient health outcomes by providing strategic leadership in the specification of sets of implementable standards for health information sharing.
Charged with operationalizing this goal, the JIC identified the need to develop a number of relevant use case-focused Standards Sets. Standards Sets follow the working definition of a coherent collection of standards and standards artefacts that support a specific use case. The first Standards Set the JIC prioritized for completion is the Patient Summary.
Through a collaborative development process drawing upon international subject matter expertise, JIC membership and public consultation, a JIC coordination group has developed the Patient Summary Standards Set for immediate release. This Standards Set and its supporting documents are predominantly geared at vendors, healthcare organisations and governments/policy makers who are exploring ways of developing and implementing Patient Summaries.
As a guidance document, the Standards Set provides an overview of standards, standards artefacts and profiles that meet agreed criteria for a specific Use Case. It does not recommend a single or specific implementation for a particular topic. Rather, the intent is to provide sufficient detail to enable different stakeholders to choose the standards, artefacts and profiles most suited to satisfying their requirements.
The Standards Set is free for use and developed in line with best practice such as the work in ISO TC 215 on the Reference Standards Portfolio. It is a ‘living’ document that will be maintained and updated based on feedback, evolution and emergence of new standards and related artefacts on an annual basis.
The collection of information artefacts, including the Patient Summary Standards Set, can be accessed via the dedicated Patient Summary Standards Set page on the Joint Initiative Council website. In addition to the PSSS guidance document, the JIC has made all supporting resources available for your use.
To this end, as a means of supporting national and international bodies in their efforts to increase efficiency and coordination while reducing duplication, the JIC invites stakeholders to invest time in the review, use and betterment of this inaugural Standards Set.For additional information, please contact psssfeedback@snomed.org.