The 2021 G7 Health Ministerial meeting reaffirmed the importance of international collaboration on health, including a commitment to working towards adopting a standardised minimum dataset through the International Patient Summary (IPS) standard.
The 2021 G7 Health Ministerial meeting reaffirmed the importance of international collaboration on health, including a commitment to working towards adopting a standardised minimum dataset through the International Patient Summary (IPS) standard.
This commitment inspired Digital Health Canada’s CHIEF Executive Forum to explore the International Patient Summary—what it is, what other countries have achieved, and how valuable it might be for Canadians. The results of this work and the discussions that followed are captured in The Value of the International Patient Summary in Canada, now available for download.
The paper aims to educate and inform the industry and to further the understanding of the clinical, health system, and patient value of the IPS as a key component of interoperability.
An International Patient Summary (a type of electronic health record extract) can follow a patient across borders, meaning that data can be shared with other health authorities, provinces, territories, and countries. It enables better care abroad, where healthcare providers have no medical history of a patient.
There is currently no standardized IPS accepted in all countries, though national and regional defined data sets have been implemented across the globe.
In Canada, digital health standard leaders and experts such as Canada Health Infoway, Ontario Health’s Digital Health Information Exchange (DHIEX) project which leverages the IPS, and Canadian expert contribution to the International Cross SDO (xSDO) IPS Governance Group currently led by HL7 are cooperating to support the implementation of International Patient Summary standards.
IPS may also result in better healthcare outcomes at home and across Canada. The IPS provides a baseline of medical data to a healthcare provider, including information on medications, health conditions, past surgeries, and more. Patient Summaries can be shared across primary, acute, specialty, community, and long-term care.
Data relevant to the IPS is collected in a wide range of healthcare services, such as emergency departments, hospital units, and private clinics, and in pharmacy, dental, eye care, and palliative care. With better integrated data, there are reductions in care gaps and needless tests and procedures could be eliminated.
Clinicians would have better decision-making abilities with this baseline of data, including preventing adverse drug reactions and reducing malpractice. The IPS can make healthcare systems run more efficiently, with resources better allocated and costs decreased due to fewer readmissions.
With robust interoperability, important pieces of a patient’s health record can be electronically accessed during planned and unplanned care transitions, potentially reducing duplicative care and costs as well as supporting improved outcomes.
Implementing the International Patient Summary must be part of the bigger vision for healthcare in Canada. Provinces, territories, and jurisdictions must align and move towards this vision together. The benefits of more efficiently run healthcare systems, better clinical decision making, reduced medical risks, and better care for all patients will be realized with patients, clinicians, and government on the side of medical data interoperability in general and the implementation of the International Patient Summary specifically.
We believe that a nationally coordinated IPS standards resource could facilitate the movement of select clinical information for patient care, making it available whenever and wherever needed.
