iSalus, technological partner for the development of the patient summary in the private sector of Catalonia

The International Patient Summary

The IPS is the standardised set of the most important data in a Patient’s Clinical Summary, as well as patient demographics, diagnoses, medication, immunisations, and procedures performed. This information has been standardised both in terms of format and coding with controlled reference vocabularies. It can thus be shared locally and internationally. The standards selected to structure the content of the IPS are governed by EU guides and directives, as well as by ISO regulations.

The Blue Button project

The BB project in Catalonia is aligned with other EU and national initiatives. The project xSHARE, and the two lines of work at a national level: the public one, carried out through the download of the patient summary in La Meva Salut; and the private one.

In the private sphere, the project is led by the TIC Salut Social Foundation and ACES (Catalan Association of Health Entities), in addition to the collaboration of Clínica Bofill and Clínica Girona. These entities were the first to join the project and currently have the BB button in the test environments of their respective patient channels. During 2024, the PoC (Proof of Concept) was carried out, through which the patient summary can now be generated in multiple languages with a standardised structured format for any of the patients of the two entities.

iSalus presented this initiative at the Innovation and New Healthcare Technologies Conference in Murcia, which took place last September. On these same dates, an internal session to demonstrate the operation of BB buttons between both PoC centres was also conducted.

The iSalus paper

With a long history and extensive experience in interoperability and standards, the company iSalus was awarded the contract to develop the BB functionality in the private sector of Catalonia. As part of this assignment, it has carried out development with the integration engine Mirth Connect, which allows patient data to be obtained from entities and transformed into an interoperable IPS with HL7 CDA R2 format. In addition to carrying out this development, iSalus also has a collaboration agreement to offer support in the installation and configuration of the BB functionality.

Next steps

After the demonstration of the BB buttons that took place in September, preparations are currently underway for more centres to join the project. Specifically, a few weeks ago the BB functionality and the conclusions of the PoC were presented to four new entities: Sagrada Família Clinic, HM Delfos, Mi Tres Torres and Viamed Salut. The transition from PoC to pilot is also being prepared at Clínica Bofill and Clínica Girona.

At the level of BB functionalities, iSalus has begun to develop a new service that will facilitate obtaining the IPS in HL7 FHIR format in addition to the aforementioned CDA R2 HL7. This evolution will allow the BB functionality to be adapted to the new generation HL7 standard.