Analysis and evaluation of EHR approaches.

EHR systems are core applications in any eHealth/pHealth environment and represent basic services for health telematics platforms. Many projects are performed at the level of Standards Developing Organizations or national programs, respectively, for defining EHR architectures as well as related design, implementation, and deployment processes. Claiming to meet the challenge for semantic interoperability and offering the right pathway, the resulting documents and specifications are sometimes controversial and even inconsistent. Based on a long tradition in the EHR domain, on the collective experience of academic groups such as the EFMI EHR Working Group, and on an active involvement at CEN, ISO, HL7 and several national projects around the globe, an analysis and evaluation study has been performed using the Generic Component Model reference architecture. Strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches as well as migration pathways for re-using and harmonizing the available materials are offered.