The Relationship between CEN 13606, HL7, and OpenEHR

With the recent release of the NEHTA report on standards for Shared EHRs, there has been much interest and some confusion over the report's discussion and recommendations for standards. This paper gives an overview of the roles of the main interoperability standards and specifications discussed in the NEHTA report. It begins with a brief section on the practical importance of interoperability for clinicians and consumers in the increasingly common shared-care environment. It then discusses the relationship between the openEHR specifications and the formal consensus standards recommended by NEHTA for Shared EHR systems in Australia - CEN 13606, HL7 CDA, and HL7v2.x. Finally the need for an Australian Standard for a Shared-EHR architecture is canvassed and openEHR is proposed as the basis for this standard.