Application for the Registration Authority for EN 1068

EN 1068 "Health Informatics - Registration of coding schemes"

In view of the objectives of the European Institute for Health Records, the EuroRec Institute for short, applying to become the Registration Authority for EN 1068 "Health Informatics - Registration of coding schemes", is in line with both its scope and the legal framework in which it operates.

The registration of coding schemes for health is an acknowledged urgent need to facilitate data and information interchange, as well as semantic interoperability between record systems. It undoubtedly represents a service of public interest and in view of this it appears logical that its implementation is entrusted to a non-profit organisation with a controlled delegation of powers.

The tasks to be tackled by the Registration Authority have been clearly identified as:

  • to launch a survey within six months about existing registers held by potential Submitting Organisations in European countries. This would also include national standardisation bodies, as well as all relevant parties, possibly beyond Europe;
  • to contact all known Responsible Organisations and suggest registration of the coding schemes they are responsible for;
  • to establish a database following the prescriptions of clause 7 "Register of Health Coding Schemes" of EN 1068:2004;
  • to seek a URL in order to make the register available on the World-Wide Web;
  • to seek a Registration Authority Identifier (RAI), as per ISO/IEC 11179:2003 6 "Information technology - Specification and standardisation of data elements" - Part 6: "Registration of Data Elements", as well as ISO/IEC 6523 1:1998 "Information technology - Structure for the identification of organisations and organisation parts" -- Part 1: "Identification of organisation identification schemes" and Part 2: "Registration of organisation identification schemes"

The registration of coding schemes will complement the quality labelling and certification services for EHRs that the Institute is planning to offer in Europe and this activity will be included as a separate element of the business plan.