BS EN ISO 13606-1:2019

What is ISO 13606-1 about?  

ISO 13606 is a multipart series, that discusses standards for electronic health record communication. ISO 13606-1 is an international standard that specifies the information architecture required for interoperable communications between electronic health record systems and services that need or provide electronic health record (EHR) data. This is to support the interoperability of systems and components that need to communicate (access, transfer, add or modify) EHR data via electronic messages or as distributed objects: 

•  Preserving the original clinical meaning intended by the author 
•  Reflecting the confidentiality of that data as intended by the author and patient 

ISO 13606-1 is used for Electronic Health Record (EHR) communication between an EHR system or repository and clinical applications or middleware components (such as decision support components) that need to access or provide EHR data. 

NOTE: ISO 13606-1 is not intended to specify the internal architecture or database design of EHR systems. 

Who is ISO 13606-1 for? 

ISO 13606-1  on electronic health record communication is useful for: 

•    Manufacturers of EHR systems 
•    Research and development team 
•    Healthcare professional  
•    Healthcare industries 
•    Healthcare service providers 
•    Regulatory bodies 

Why should you use ISO 13606-1?  

Electronic health record is used for purposes such as teaching, clinical audit, administration and reporting, service management, research and epidemiology. ISO 13606-1 is used to support the direct care given to identifiable individuals or self-care by individuals themselves, or to support population monitoring systems such as disease registries and public health surveillance. 

ISO 13606-1 provides you with the reference model which represents the global characteristics of health record components, how they are aggregated, and the context information required to meet ethical, legal and provenance requirements. This model defines the set of classes that form the generic building blocks of the electronic health record (EHR). 

ISO 13606-1 is useful for communicating data about individuals between electronic health record systems and population registries, and also for conducting research using electronic health records. 

The components that support an interface conforming to ISO 13606-1 are electronic health record systems and also other services such as security components, guidelines and workflow systems, alerting and decision support services, personal health systems and applications, sensors and wearable devices, and medical knowledge management services. 

What’s changed since the last update? 

BS EN ISO 13606-1:2019 supersedes BS EN ISO 13606-1:2008. which has been technically revised. The main changes compared to the previous edition are summarized in the Introduction.