Global EMR vendor Epic will support the International Patient Summary FHIR specification when it is available in 2025 due to what it said was increasing demand for IPS implementations.
The International Patient Summary is a minimal and non-exhaustive set of basic clinical data that is designed to make it simpler for healthcare organisations to exchange data securely across international borders.
Epic’s initial plans include support for the HL7 FHIR IPS Implementation Guide within its CareEverywhere health information exchange platform, which is used across North America as well as in Europe and Australia.
Children’s Health Ireland plans to implement an Epic system at the new children’s hospital in Dublin.
Epic has also announced that FHIR will become a primary means of information exchange in the coming years, and that IPS is a first step in that journey.
Epic said the initial release will include all required data types – problems, allergies, and medications – as well as immunisations. Results, procedures, and other optional data types will be added over time.
Epic users will be able to generate IPS documents for treatment-based exchange between providers and make documents available for patients and their providers to download, it said.
Countries like New Zealand are using the IPS as a summary record of a person’s health information and allow access to key health information nationally and internationally. The NZ Patient Summary (NZPS) also being linked to consumer-focused systems such as its My Health Record.
Work first began on the IPS in 2016 by various standards communities. An IPS implementation guide was developed in 2019. It is now being supported by the Global Digital Health Partnership.
Thanks for this update Kate – great to see the take up of IPS. I was the Australian clinical representative on the initial ISO Standards group that formulated the IPS scope and requirements under the leadership of Elizabeth Keller from Canada. IHE has now developed this further in conjunction with HL7 as part of the Gemini project and has incorporated interoperability conformance testing for IPS into the IHE tooling (Gazelle). This was successfully trialled at the European IHE Connectathon in June. There will be a further update on this at HIC.