RSO South Limburg is working on a regional data ecosystem in which healthcare providers, patients and clients can safely share and use data. On Thursday, April 10, at the Tech Mainstage of Zorg & ict, directors Michael Ehlen and Wim Eurlings will talk about the South Limburg approach. "Our most important message: choose open standards.
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Last year during Zorg & ict, Wim Eurlings, director-director of RSO Zuid-Limburg, already held a presentation in one of the theater sessions, together with RSO West-Brabant. "The hall was sold out then," he recalls. "Many and young audience, interested in the main topic of data availability. After all, we do have certain ideas about how to organize that in the south."
RSO South Limburg is one of the regional cooperation organizations (RSOs) in the Netherlands, each working in its own region to improve data availability in healthcare.
A fair like Zorg & ict is important to tell your story, adds Michael Ehlen, director of MeanderGroep Zuid-Limburg and board chairman of RSO Zuid-Limburg. "We have to try to get to more uniformity in the Netherlands. That is what we would like. We think sharing data is very important. And we have had a certain vision on that for a long time."
Data ecosystem
They will talk more about that vision on the mainstage of Care & ict on Thursday, April 10. Central to that story are data availability and interoperability. "We are working on a data ecosystem based on openEHR and FHIR," says Ehlen. "With open and international standards."
"It took quite a bit of missionary work by Wim and his colleagues to get that story sold. But now you can see that we are gaining momentum: this is the way to go. By sharing this story, we get enough critical mass and can scale up."
Which technology partners?
Since RSO South Limburg launched in 2022, many steps have been taken to create a regional data ecosystem that enables data availability, Eurlings explains. "We came up with and developed our own plan. We analyzed the market to see which technology partners we are going to choose for it. Now we are in final negotiations."
The concept has recently been successfully tested. RSO Zuid-Limburg, in which twelve healthcare parties in the region participate, will soon supply and operate the data ecosystem. "We will soon provide data to healthcare providers, patients and clients. The data will simply be available."
Federated model
The technical organization of data sharing is only one side of the issue. For data sharing to be successful, the quality of that data must be right. "When we talk about that data, we do need to have the same understanding of it," Ehlen says. "We also need to make sure everyone is capturing it in the same way."
According to Ehlen, RSO Zuid-Limburg's approach is distinctive because data emphatically stays at the source. "You can say: put all the data of the twelve participants in one big mountain of data. We're not going to do that. We believe the data should stay at the source and become available there; a federated model, based on openEHR and FHIR."
In that federated model, there is an important role for the owner of the data, Eurlings explains. "If you want to start improving the quality of data, you have to be with the healthcare professional, because they register. To do that, you have to respect that that data belongs to the healthcare professional and that no one is touching it with their fingers." RSO South Limburg can then transform the data through the international OpenEHR model and exchange it through FHIR.
Data sharing for telemonitoring
In several use cases, RSO South Limburg will implement this approach. For example, in the area of data sharing for telemonitoring. There, with RSO South Limburg, hospitals as well as general practitioners and home care organizations are at the table.
Ehlen: "So we have a nice connection and support from parties who think we should achieve uniformity. But that a lot of water still has to flow through the Meuse, to put it in South Limburg terms, we also agree on that." Depending on the approval of the IZA application, Ehlen expects to deliver the first live product by the end of next year.
'Open up'
Ehlen describes RSO South Limburg as a regional hub in a nationwide network. "That is partly provided by the CumuluZ program. We connect to all generic facilities. Things that have been realized elsewhere and are effectively reusable for us are deployed. In return, we stipulate that anything we can share can be shared. We want to be an open region."
"Within our region, we ensure that healthcare institutions can interoperate with each other. At the same time, interoperability means that the regions are connected. For Advanced Care Planning, we do that with the Twente region and with Noord-Holland-Noord, three RSOs that are taking this up jointly."
The strength, according to Ehlen, lies in the combination of the federated approach, open standards and concentration on data sharing - and leaving to others the discussion of which applications to use and which not to use. "Our main message is: choose open standards, open up and connect. That's the bottom line."
Source: by Jasper Enklaar, Dutch Health Hub
