The G7-IPS Roadmap has been developed to enable countries to implement the components of IPS in a manageable way that fits in with their existing health economy, health technology and legal requirements.
The G7 health ministers agreed that through the implementation of IPS, information could be more complete and reliable. This would result in better healthcare experiences and outcomes for patients.
ISO IPS was originally designed to be used in ‘unplanned, cross-border care’. It consists of a minimal and non-exhaustive dataset. However, it is recognised that the ISO IPS information will be beneficial to planned care.
At present, when a patient seeks care from a new clinician (particularly but not exclusively in a foreign country) there is no consistent way that the clinician can access relevant and potentially vital clinical information about the patient. Currently, in many instances, this relies on the patient’s memory.
“Adopting a structured and safe IPS record, and related service infrastructure will enable patients to access and share reliable information with their clinician”
Each country or sub-national jurisdiction develops and implements a FHIR and ISO 27269:2021 compliant data model for their data point(s). This is essential as each healthcare system and the source(s) of information differ, so bespoke functionality will be required. For some G7 countries, using IPS FHIR standards will be an effective way to share information across their sub-national borders.
To enable the G7-IPS to work the patient will be in control of their own healthcare data and will have the ability to securely share their data. This makes the data management in IPS the responsibility of the patient and not the originating healthcare provider.
This approach enables the clinicians treating a foreign national patient to view the clinical information they need to provide safer care and improve the experience of the foreign national patient. It also provides the patient with the opportunity to share information about their treatment abroad with their regular clinicians when they return home.
ConnectHealth develops Universal Health Chain (UHC), the most secure communication platform for cross-border healthcare. The services are deployed in a federated network governed by the UNID Foundation to allow sending and receiving FHIR messages between patients, legal guardians, clinicians, pharmacies and insurers with Universal Health Identifiers.
The digital identities of the federated entities and end-users utilize Universal Health Identifiers as defined in the Unified Identification Protocol for Training and Health (WO/2020/136289).
Documentation on Github: https://github.com/Universal-Health-Chain
