Home // International Journal On Advances in Life Sciences, volume 8, numbers 3 and 4, 2016 // View article

Structuring the EPRs; The National development of Archetypes for Core Functionallity

Authors:
Gro-Hilde Ulriksen
Rune Pedersen

Keywords: electronic patient records; archetypes; openEHR; semantic interoperability; core archetypes.

Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of introducing a set of core archetypes to succeed with the national consensus work on archetypes in Norway. This is illustrated by emphasizing on four important challenges identified through the national work with archetypes in Norway from 2012-2016. First, the process of establishing a well-functioning national archetype organization, including a network of competent healthcare personnel to participate in the consensus process. This comprises how to increase the pace of developing these national archetype. Second, the interdependence between the archetypes and the new electronic patient record system (EPR), focusing on the need for archetypes to enable developing an EPR system, at the same time as an EPR system is required to develop and test out high quality archetypes. Third, the development of local archetypes at a specialized hospital clinic, including the first attempts of using archetypes for clinical practice, and useful lessons learned for the national archetype work. Fourth, the need to define the number of archetypes to plan the future archetype work, including estimating resources for the work, and the challenges of governing archetypes in relation to who is responsible for what aspects of the archetypes. Establishing a prototype of an EPR system based on generic core archetypes may increase clinicians understanding of structured EPR. Our research questions are therefore: What has been the challenges in the national archetype process so far, and how could these challenges be met through developing a set of core archetypes? Empirically the paper focuses on the national archetype work, and the regional archetype organization in the North Norwegian health authority. Our qualitative case also includes other archetype initiatives in Norway like for instance the use of archetypes for clinical practice at the small clinic in the Southern and Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority. Except from being a status report on national archetype development, this paper also contributes to a longitudinal interpretive study, related to the development of a large-scale EPR system by the North Norwegian Health Authority.

Pages: 243 to 256

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2016. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2016

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2660