Architecture for national e-health infrastructure in Lithuania.

Building a patient centered National e-Health system has been a challenging task for the Health Ministry of Lithuania in 2005-2006. The first and the main task is to design and to build the infrastructure of the National e-health system. The paper presents the architecture of the system, which aims: (a) to integrate already designed and implemented information systems, (b) to communicate with other national information systems, (c) to provide services (basic ones at the initial stage) for users and (d) to support further e-health systems development in long-term perspective. The system design is based on the HISA approach. The core of the system consists of on-line data storage (including classifiers and registries), of the automation and integration layers for health care processes, of a security layer, a system control layer and a client layer. After having defined the concepts of processes and activities, of the security, of the registries and classifiers within the system and the Electronic Health Records System, then follows the implementation stage. Until the end of 2006 it will include the core of the national e-Health infrastructure and the part of the information system providing basic services for the pilot Lithuanian healthcare institutions.