BS ISO 13131:2021

What is ISO 13131— Telehealth services in health informatics about?

ISO 13131 is an international standard that deals with the guidelines for health informatics.

ISO 13131 provides processes that can be used to analyze the risks to the quality and safety of healthcare and continuity of care when telehealth services are used to support healthcare activities.

ISO 13131 provides guidelines for the operations of telehealth services, using risk management processes, quality objectives, and procedures that are derived. These include the following domains:

• Management of telehealth quality processes by the healthcare organization
• Strategic and operational process management relating to regulations, knowledge management (best practice), and guidelines
• Healthcare processes relating to people such as healthcare activities, planning, and responsibilities
• Management of financial resources to support telehealth services
• Management of information management and security used in telehealth services
• Processes related to the planning and provision of human resources, infrastructure, facilities, and technology resources for use by telehealth services

ISO 13131 provides a set of example guidelines containing quality objectives and procedures for each domain of telehealth services.

Note: ISO 13131 does not provide guidance for the manufacture, assembly, configuration, interoperability, or management of devices, products, or technical systems.

Who is ISO 13131— Telehealth services in health informatics for?

ISO 13131 on Telehealth services in health informatics is useful for:

• Large Hospitals
• Clinics in the rural areas
• Health care organizations
• Managers dealing with health care services

Why should you use ISO 13131— Telehealth services in health informatics?

Health services rely on many technical devices and services including, facsimile machines, telephones, cameras, mobile phones, mobile devices, health state monitors, diagnostic scanners, and communications services. It also includes email, telephony, video conferencing, image transmission, and electronic messaging to convey health information and data between healthcare actors.

ISO 13131 describes telehealth services where information and communication technology services are being used to support healthcare activities. It talks about the advantages of telehealth services that can help you support immediate healthcare activities, like using synchronous communications services such as a telephone or video conversation, or delayed health care activities using asynchronous communications services such as messaging services.

ISO 13131 describes guidelines for the quality and risk management processes to help the organizations apply and develop quality objectives and procedures, that are appropriate to the telehealth services they provide. It provides you with procedures for the implementation of telehealth services by a large organization. It also gives you use cases for the application of quality planning guidelines that can be used in different types of real-world telehealth services.

What’s changed since the last update?

BS ISO 13131:2021 cancels and replaces ISO/TS 13131:2014, which has been technically revised. The main changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:

• Alignment with ISO 9000:2015, ISO 9001:2015, ISO 31000:2018, and ISO 13940:2015
• Addition of informative annexes providing use cases illustrating applications of this document
• Improvement in the clarity of the clauses on quality management and risk management