A series of invitational(see letter) workshops to bridge the gap between developers of healthcare terminologies and healthcare information systems
The main objective of this accompanying measure is to bridge the gap between developers of healthcare terminologies and healthcare information systems. As such, ToMeLo is an important step in realising the overall objective of the Health Telematics Programme: improving continuity of care through the integration of a diversity of medical and administrative systems in one coherent interoperable and multilingual environment. The need for safe and sensible communication between applications is already well understood and covered in several ongoing projects. However, next to a good insight of what information is really necessary to exchange, the structure and the language used is important. These urgent needs are reflected in the many ongoing projects around the Electronic Healthcare Record, and projects for a unified medical language. Because of the sheer size of medicine all these projects are necessarily limited in their scope. There is a need for a broad view on the further development of medical language not only from the point of view of grouping (ICD, DRG's etc.), but above all from the perspective of patient documentation and systems integration. A more detailed description of the ToMeLo objectives can be found in this compressed MSWord 6 RTF document
ToMeLo not only provides a missing link perceived in the healthcare community as described above, but also fills in a gap in the interrelationships of ongoing projects in Health Telematics related to the Electronic Healthcare Record. Indeed, where the PROREC-project (represented in ToMeLo by the PROREC international secretary hosted by OLE NV) acts as horizontal dissemination and harmonisation platform for Electronic Healthcare Related projects, and the European Federation of Classification Centres (represented in ToMeLo through KUN-MIES chairing the federation) provides similar services towards healthcare terminology and classification activities in the Health Telematics Sector, there is not yet a platform where both issues are covered multidisciplinary.
The action is initiated by two large prospective user groups of 4FW technology. In addition practising health care professionals, users of the results like Insurance Companies are invited to the action.
The action will stimulate the confrontation and combined use of technologies being developed in a number of 4FW projects. Links have been estblished to the PRESTIGE, SYNAPSES, TELENURSE, I4C, PROREC, and GALEN-IN-USE projects.
Better communication of the citizen's health care data. Reduction in cost because of less duplication.
Products tailored closer to the user's need because of an integrated view on the business process, the record, and the terminology.
Seamless sensible integration of systems, where not only data, but also the meaning of that data is communicated. High degree of re-usability, through common services and structures.
The Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1992) says a.o.: ' the
Community shall identify projects of common interest and shall
implement any measure that may prove necessary to ensure the interoperability
of networks, in particular in
the field of technical standardisation'. This action addresses
standardisation of representation and content.
Respond to: P.ZANSTRA
© University of Nijmegen, Medical Informatics, Epidemiology and Statistics 1996
Last edited: April 30, 1997