eHealth Consortium Limited

Project Stakeholders (as of 31 July 2010)

We value advice and comments from all ehealth stakeholders and welcome their participation in the next 12 months (1 Jun 2010 to 31 May 2011). If your organization develops your own clinical management system and would like to participate in this meaningful project, to see how collaboration between various stakeholders would work towards the same data standards, you are welcome to join the Project as additional stakeholders by contacting the eHealth Consortium at 3488 3762 or info@ehealth.org.hk!

Lecture on Health Informatics Standards

To facilitate the sharing of experience in preparing and implementing information standards for the eHR, we have pleasure of inviting Professor Yun Sik KWAK, Chairman of ISO Technical Committee on Health Informatics (ISO/TC215) and Professor of Medical Informatics of Kyungpook National University of South Korea, to deliver two visiting lectures on health information standards on Dec 16 and 19 at Hospital Authority.  We received overwhelming responses with more than 200 attendances on both days.  Presentation materials are posted in our website.

We have pleasure to have invited Professor Yun Sik KWAK, an expert in the eHealth Record Information Standards, who is now serving as the Chairman of ISO Technical Committee on Health Informatics (ISO/TC215) and as the Professor of Medical Informatics of Kyungpook National University of South Korea, as our Honorary eHR Information Standards Advisor.  Prof Kwak would give us invaluable advices and comments on whether the proposed eHR content & information standards are implementable, what would assist the adoption of the proposed standards, and how it could be improved.  Prof Kwak has visited Hong Kong in mid December and conducted two lectures on the Health Informatics Standards and International Development of Health Informatics Standards on Dec 16 and 19 respectively.

Paving the Road to the Future

The eHealth Consortium founding members, Hong Kong Society of Medical Informatics (HKSMI) and Internet Professionals Association (iProA), with the support from major health sector stakeholders such as the Hospital Authority (HA), Hong Kong Medical Association (HKMA), Hong Kong doctors' Union (HKDU), the Hong Kong Private Hospitals Association (HKPHA), and other healthcare providers, we propose to implement an electronic web-based validation platform which aims to:

    * Provide an environment to test the conformity of electronic health records in different healthcare providers to the Hong Kong Territory Wide eHR Data Standard structure being developed by the Steering Committee on Electronic Health Records Sharing (SCEHRS) from the Food and Health Bureau (FHB) of the Government.

    * Test the technical feasibility of the sharing of patient data amongst different healthcare providers in a preliminary manner building the road forward to a genuine electronic healthcare record sharing system.

    * Illustrate how the collaboration between various stakeholders would work, by stimulating them to work together with conjoint efforts in building the platform and working towards the same data standards.

    * Illustrate to the different healthcare stakeholders the processes in building software and adjustments in order to make their healthcare data conformable to the territory wide standard.

We are indeed very happy to receive a generous sponsorship from the Food and Health Bureau, and the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer for this initiative, which will embark as a 24-month pilot project starting on 23rd April 2008.

 A Project Steering Committee which will incorporate the stakeholders will start working busily in these 2 years to spreahead the project.

We expect the measurable outcomes of this project to include:

    * Not less than 4 distinct stakeholders from both the public and private healthcare facilities to participate in the project, each contributing not less than 30 de-identified patient records.

    * The adoption of the core dataset for sharing.  This set of data will conform to the discussions generated from the Steering Committee on eHealth Record Sharing (SCEHRS) and Working Groups.

    * A workable process for the stakeholders to share data covering administration, patient consent, registration, authentication and security issues (although the workable process here does not imply the business flow for territory-wide eHealth record sharing to be defined by the SCEHRS).

    *  The opportunity for the stakeholders to produce a prototype sharable healthcare data format for future territory wide electronic healthcare record sharing.

    * A platform which could be adjunct to a wider implementation of the future central territory wide EHR system.

    *  Consolidated report and recommendations to the FHB.

We believe this is a solid initiative to kick start a bi-directional sharing of interoperable electronic health records across the whole of the territory of Hong Kong amongst the public and private healthcare institutions.  This will certainly contribute to the betterment of healthcare delivery processes and outcomes for the benefit of all the citizens in Hong Kong.  It is our vision to make Hong Kong the first place to have a unified interoperable electronic health record sharing system.

We certainly need the advice and comment from you at all times.  Please contribute by calling the eHealth Consortium if you are interested to join in assisting this project!