The use of HL7 as an interoperability framework in a regional healthcare system in Greece

The integration of information systems represents one of the most urgent priorities of a regional healthcare authority in order to meet its clinical, organizational and managerial needs. Current practice shows that the most promising approach to achieve a regional healthcare information system is to use a health level 7 (HL7) message based communication system implemented by an asynchronous common communication infrastructure between healthcare sites. The system is a complete and integrated information system at a regional level that comprises all types of healthcare levels, that includes interoperability issues, that covers most of the needed components, and that is able to work efficiently in a secure wide area network to ensure data privacy and confidentiality. Another important feature of the proposed solution is that it creates an interoperability framework that can be replicated from one healthcare institution to another. In that sense, common interoperability messages can be used to interconnect heterogeneous information systems. In response to this strategy, more than 10 different consortiums have submitted proposals to the Greek government and the proposed interoperability framework seems to be widely accepted as a solution to enhance information and communication technologies developments in the healthcare sector in Greece