eHealth4U - Integrated National eHealth Ecosystem

eHealth4U is a research project that undertakes the challenge of defining the structure and content of the national integrated Electronic health Record (HER) system in Cyprus and developing a prototype of it. Its vision is that the outcome of the project will establish the foundations of the country’s broader eHealth ecosystem adhering to the Electronic Health Law of Cyprus (No.59(I)/2019). The project eHealth4U understands that materializing the full potential of an EHR, is to use a citizen centric philosophy. This is, to be designed and oriented towards the needs of the citizens and not necessarily those of health institutions.

One of the major issues in the healthcare industry is the exchange of health data between disparate systems. To this end, the project leverages state of the art interoperability standards and profiles in line with EU recommendations and directions . An interoperability framework is articulated based on the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard by HL7, one of most prevalent healthcare interoperability standards. The framework also utilizes the IHE interoperability profiles proposed by the EU under the 1025/2012 directive in 2015 while adopts the provisions of the 2016 eHealth network guideline on the electronic exchange of health data under Cross-Border Directive 2011/24/EU. All interoperability mechanisms and eHealth services are implemented retaining a system with a holistic security enforcement and data security-by-design.