Digital Health Interoperabilityin Digital Health Research & Innovation
empirica research has been at the forefront of European Digital Health interoperability developments. To promote common European understanding and goal-oriented discussions, the European Commission sponsored an i2-Health study that defined an initial European Union eHealth Interoperability Framework, which has since gained international recognition. This was later expanded in the European Thematic Network "CALLIOPE" to cover the wider eHealth architectural domain. The semantic interoperability that linguistically disparate medical professionals, patients and others require for exchanging, understanding and acting on patient information and medical knowledge within and across health systems is a core aspect of empirica's work. Medical records need to be technically interoperable, and also to be structured in line with agreed global standards. They should also be semantically coded so that, in many application contexts, they can fully support disease prevention, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, acute healthcare provision, rehabilitation and long-term care, as well as public health services, in a European cross-border context.
