Who has adopted Open Platforms?
Open Platform Adoption
Open platforms based on openEHR have been implemented at scale across the globe, with progressive adoption across UK health and care.
Adoption in the UK
- Scotland National Strategy - openEHR is at the heart of Scotland's strategy to create a National Digital Platform. openEHR is already used for their national clinical decision support system.
- Two major NHS Trusts in England - In England two major NHS Trusts have adopted openEHR - Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust are using it alongside its Allscripts megasuite; and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust are committed to a ‘best of breed’ approach built on an open platform.
- 100,000 Genome Project - 17 NHS Trusts have implemented openEHR initially for the collection of phenotypic data as part of the 100,000 genomes project. This further opens up the opportunity to exploit the investment in openEHR to deliver other applications.
- Leeds Care Record - Leeds City Council have committed to openEHR for its city wide Leeds Care Record.
- Other regional care records - Open platforms are at the centre of a number of the recent Local Health and Care Record Exemplar (LHCRE) bids. This includes the Yorkshire and Humberside LHCRE who have confirmed selection of an Open Platform regional care record solution.
- Wales Diabetes Management - Wales are piloting openEHR to support their Wales-wide management of diabetes.
Global Adoption
There are implementations of openEHR across the globe:
- Moscow - This is the largest openEHR implementation in operation, supporting 12 million patients across the whole of the City of Moscow.
- Slovenia - The Slovenia national clinical record system is an open platform based on openEHR and holds 2 million patient records. Open platforms are also used within a number of hospitals which include the Ljubljana Children’s Hospital. The system has achieved HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 6 Certification (see link). HIMSS EMRAM is a world recognised certification, and there are currently only two Trusts in the UK that have achieved this level of certification (see link). This demonstrates that open platforms are proven for delivering Healthcare IT solutions with the highest level of certified performance.
- China - China has recently implemented an openEHR-based open platform solution across a large hospital.
- Brazil - Brazil has selected openEHR as the basis for their national record. This will cover over 200 million people.
- Pan-Europe - openEHR is used by Eurotransplant covering Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Slovenia.
- Germany - openEHR is the basis of the HIGHmed Project, linking 10 major German hospitals.
- Scandinavia - openEHR has been adopted across Scandinavia and is in use in Finland, Sweden and Norway with three of the leading Scandinavian EHR vendors (Dips, Cambio and Tieto) building systems based on openEHR
- Malta - Malta are building a national EHR based on openEHR
- National Standards - openEHR has been adopted as a national standard in Norway, India, Slovenia and Brazil and is used for standards development in Australia, Finland, Sweden, Russia, the Philippines and Canada.
What do others say?
There is consensus across the majority of stakeholders in health and care that platform architectures are the future of digital health, with most advocating open platforms.
This is a view supported by many global experts and major consultancies, including:
- McKinsey and Co - In their 2016 report, McKinsey and Co have projected that health and care systems implementing an open innovation platform can save more than 11% of total national healthcare costs. That’s £15bn for the NHS.
- Accenture - “Health platforms will be the foundation on which future collaboration, tracking and continuous improvement are built”
- Gartner - Gartner have said: “NHS is reliant on closed systems” and that “openEHR standards offer a potential solution to help HDO CIOs retain control of care delivery data in the long term”
- Leading Digital Health Experts - At a recent healthcare conference session: “How are digital health pioneers embracing open innovation platforms?”, a number of leading digital health experts from within the NHS and industry, were highly supportive of open platforms.