Joint ITU-WHO Workshop on
e-Health Standards and Interoperability
(Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012)
Session 7 chair’s notes from session 7 open
discussion - inputs from meeting
participants and action plan
from WHO and ITU
Marco Carugi
ITU-T SG13 vice-Chair, Q3/13 Rapporteur and
FG M2M Service Layer vice-Chair
ZTE Corporation
Marco.Carugi@zte.com.cn
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
Session 7 open discussion:
inputs from meeting participants
For SDOs: to coordinate with new HL7 initiative on
Mobile E-health
For SDO: to consider effective cost models for standards
licensing (see also WHO initiatives)
For Policy makers, Regulators: more awareness is
needed; how to present them the work; security and
privacy (this is also for governments)
For technical community: to consider common
evacuation methods in case of disasters (ITU-T CAP
work, new ITU FG on Disaster Relief Systems, Network
Resilience and Recovery )
For technical community: to consider open information
exchange infrastructure addressing issues in the context
of the global infrastructure to enable health information
exchange
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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Inputs from meeting participants
For each stakeholder: to clarify own key reasons for non
adoption of standards
For all stakeholders: to clarify what are/how they see
their roles and responsibilities in the process and engage
in those roles and responsibilities
For all stakeholders: to understand the value of health
information
For all stakeholders: to share successful practices
WHO is preparing standards implementation practices
About the Standards Roadmap: it is useful, including for
its impact on health; a suggested starting point are the
HIS (Health Information System) elements for service life
cycle and what standards are applicable there; it is
necessary to identify the targeted services
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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Inputs from meeting participants
An effort for a converged view on data and
information structure may be useful
More education is key
QoS aspects require more attention
A starting point are the functional features we
can expect, but we should also maintain a fluid
situation enabling continuous experimentation
To consider how to address the standards
process recognizing that there are different
national/regional situations and different issues
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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Inputs from meeting participants
WHO: overall objective is universal access and
management of information, addressing health
requirements of individuals, enabling actions for
health
To create environment which enables effective
implementation in specific situations
Common approaches for the roadmap are an
imperative
To consider principles of interoperability without
developing specific adapters for all standards
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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Inputs from meeting participants
Technical guidelines to implement services in
specific situations: who will do that ?
At first an health expert group has to describe
the service flows independently of specific
technical aspects
WHO guidelines are offering guidance based on
evidence, they do not propose a mandatory way,
they can be/are adapted based on different
factors
How to create at first the committment in
countries to value the information exchange
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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Inputs from meeting participants
At country level: to learn by example, why to do,
to identify criteria for standards selection. It is
needed to identify the leading examples and share
them. It is not necessarily easy to make choices by
the country, WHO and others should help.
Collaboration among countries should be promoted
by ITU/WHO.
To move forward, it is needed to publish use cases
from countries with success/failures
Collecting, disseminating and using information on
different aspects in health sector is essential
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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Action plan from
WHO (N. Al-Shorbaji) and ITU (R. Scholl)
WHO-ITU Joint Report of this workshop
WHO-ITU Joint Policy Brief about the value of standards and
interoperability for the exchange of health information
Creation of a Working Group to advice both WHO and ITU on
future steps
Work on a Roadmap about standards and interoperability adoption
– which steps for the process, matrix of standards versus areas
WHO-ITU collaboration with SDOs to create a portal with some
level of information categorization
Events for education on value of standards and interoperability
Production of some literature on value of standards and
interoperability (based on case studies etc.)
NOTE: a collaboration initiative on ITS (Intelligent Transportation
Systems) has been launched by ITU. Its Terms of Reference
include requirements and gap analysis. The experience in this
collaboration could help in setting up the E-Health collaboration
between ITU, WHO and other SDOs.
Geneva, Switzerland, 26-27 April 2012
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