The standard takes the European Guidelines on cross-border care, as adopted by the European eHealth Network, as a starting point. These guidelines emerged from the EU-funded epSOS large scale pilot. They form the basis for the eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure in Europe that is currently coming into operation.
In order to facilitate the adoption of a common format for the Patient Summary across Member States, the European Commission enabled CEN to create this standard and its companion implementation guidance, by means of the CEN International Patient Summary (IPS) project.
Saving lives
An International Patient Summary, accessible to health care professionals across borders, can save lives in case of emergency situations and improve safe and secure care. It was developed by the European large scale pilot epSOS and further developed and tested by European projects such as eStandards and Trillium-II.
The European Committee for Standardization (CEN, French: Comité Européen de Normalisation) is a public standards organization whose mission is to foster the EU economy,the welfare of European citizens and the environment through standards and specifications. The European Standard for 'The Patient Summary for Unplanned, Cross-border Care' was approved by the members of CEN Technical Committee 251 Health Informatics.