The best possible health care is possible only if the medical data of a patient are available wherever and whenever needed, so that the medical knowledge can be used as efficiently as possible in the decision processes of all people involved in the patient’s care. This requires that doctors and nurses are enabled to share relevant medical data between the various IT systems as easily as possible. This task can only be solved with standards that make sure that the different IT systems can exchange and correctly understand data – a capability called „interoperability“.

The goal of the eStandards project („eHealth Standards and Profiles in Action for Europe and Beyond“) funded by the European Commission is to involve all relevant European stakeholders for this topic in a process of achieving consensus on recommendations and guidelines for promoting the interoperability of IT systems in eHealth. Several standards bodies, research institutes as well as representatives of industry and hospital associations are involved. The work focuses on the cross-border exchange of patient data within the European Union, but also takes into account cross-regional eHealth networks and the collaboration with the United States in the context of the EU-US memorandum of understanding concerning an international standard for patient summaries.