The basic principles of the synapses federated healthcare record server.

Synapses is a project funded under the EU Health Telematics Framework IV Programme. Synapses sets out to solve problems of sharing data between autonomous information systems, by providing generic and open means to combine healthcare records or dossiers consistently, simply, comprehensibly and securely, whether the data passes within a single healthcare institution or between institutions. This paper presents the specification of the Synapses server, the kernel concept of Synapses. It describes the basis in the European prestandard for Electronic Healthcare Record Architecture, the interfaces to the Synapses client and server and different integration mechanisms for systems providing information to the server. The specification will be verified at a number of validation sites and the final result will be in the public domain.