EpSOS (www.epSOS.eu) is a pan-European pilot project, the aim of which is to increase the quality and safety of medical services for citizens travelling within Europe. It created a global eHealth infrastructure, which allows access to the medical data of patients from the medical systems of various European countries. The project will take 6 years in total and is to be completed in June 2014, with some 45 institutions from 25 countries of Europe taking part in it at present.
In 2010 and 2011, PosAm participated in the implementation of the project, when it proposed and developed two components ensuring the semantic transformation of structured documents, which countries mutually exchange as part of the process of providing healthcare. Both components were supplied and successfully tested by the participating countries as part of the OpenNCP (open software solution for National Contact Points).
Since them, the content of the epSOS project has expanded. The original three scenarios on the use of patient data, provision of Patient summary, e-Prescription and e-Dispensation, were supplemented by an additional five new ones, offering the possibility for existing infrastructure to be used by a broad spectrum of users. At the beginning of 2013, PosAm was requested to modify the existing semantic components so that they ensure the transformation of documents as part of these new scenarios, involving the cross-border exchange of data.
This concerns the scenario of the overview of data for the prescription of drugs, the Medication Related Overview (MRO) and the report on the provision of healthcare, the Healthcare Encounter Report (HCER). In the first of them, an extract is provided of those data from the Patient summary that are required for the safe prescription, issue and administration of drugs to patients abroad. In the second one, the goal is to inform medical facilities in the domestic country of the patient about the healthcare provided to the patient abroad.
The requested changes concerned the component called TransformationManager. Its task is to make the transformation of data from the document provided by a local medical IS of the given country into the reference terminology of the epSOS project, or vice versa, the translation of a document in epSOS terminology to the language of the destination country. Its functionality was extended so that it was possible to process also documents sent as part of the new scenarios HCER and MRO.
In terms of integration to the OpenNCP version 2.0, the TransformationManager underwent successful testing by a development team and at present testing of the whole solution is taking place by institutions of individual countries participating in the pilot operation. Once complete, the OpenNCP will be the foundation of the cross-border exchange of data in medical systems in Europe. PosAm, too, had its own little but key part to play, thanks to which doctors from various countries can understand each other.