Semantic Interoperability in electronic health record: a standardised approach

The main objective of this study is to compare two major international standardisation approaches that enable semantic interoperability in electronic health record (EHR) , to identify harmonisation efforts between the two approaches and to suggest possibilities on future harmonisation. Archetypes and HL7 are the two major approaches in current Electronic Health Record development, but their approaches to semantic interoperability are very different. Many countries, organisations, and companies have adopted the overlapping approaches. It is very difficult for systems adopting different approaches to communicate. Harmonisation is one possible way other than replacing each other to settle this issue. The thesis first presents overviews on semantic interoperability in information system, electronic health records and international interoperability standards. Then, detail studies in the two approaches are conducted by reviewing articles and international standards. A set of prerequisites of semantic interoperability is used to evaluate the approaches. Finally, differences between the two approaches and harmonisation efforts are identified. The result suggests that both approach are sufficient to support semantic interoperability. Despite their incompatibility harmonisation efforts have appeared to alleviate the problem. Further harmonisation is essential and experiences may be adopted from other industries