Significance of ICT Standards for eHealth

The healthcare sector is large and complex with many different application requirements. There are a number of different types of actors that need to communicate for various healthcare purposes. The requirements are diverse and very complex. The goal is to allow all of these to communicate as required without technical obstacles. According to local and international experiences, the relevant tool is to use electronic information communication technology (ICT) systems within health sector organizations and to enable communication, networking among them. Functional integration of health information systems initially requires support by standardization of the handled data and data structures, the transaction processes, and the architecture of information handling systems. Standardization is essential reduces the time necessary for optimizing the costs when developing of the building systems, training personal, data handling (input-processing-output- processing) and as a result, the cost of the systems.