WHO and IHTSDO aim to harmonise health data

The new standards will summarise information and aggregate results from patients’ health records

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) have signed an agreement to harmonise metadata used when creating electronic patient records.

This standardised information will inform health policy, health services management and global research.

The information will comprise WHO classifications and SNOMED CT (Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms).

“The road to health passes through information," stated Tim Evans, WHO’s assistant director general for information, evidence and research.

"WHO and IHTSDO aim to increase collaboration to create and maintain jointly usable and integrated classification and terminology systems to make efficient and effective use of public resources and avoid duplication of effort.

"This is essential to creating health information standards as a common language worldwide," Evans added.

WHO classifications are used to capture information on diseases and other indicators of population health. The detailed information that is aggregated for public health purposes using WHO classifications often comes from health records, which are increasingly being held in electronic form.

Summaries of information in EHRs (electronic health records) are crucial for management, health financing and general health system administration. As a result, the accuracy and consistency of EHRs is crucial for both patient care and to ensure sound management of health system resources.

The NHS's National Programme for IT aims to introduce Summary Care Records in the UK, which may benefit from this new agreement.