Swiss eHealth Strategy 1.0 until adoption of the EPRA
In 2006, health and the healthcare system were added to the Federal Council’s strategy for an information society in Switzerland, dating back to 1998. This resulted in the preparation of the Swiss eHealth Strategy for 2007–2015, which was adopted by the Federal Council in June 2007. This strategy comprised three action areas – Electronic Patient Record, Online Services and Strategy Implementation – and set out a number of objectives. The most important one was the implementation by 2015 of a national Electronic Patient Record (EPR) managed primarily by patients themselves and from which, if required, key medical information can be accessed in electronic format anywhere and at any time. The primary objectives at healthcare system level were improved efficiency and safety, and optimised treatment quality for patients.
External link: Swiss eHealth Strategy 2007 (in German) (730 KB, 10/04/23)
As one of the first operational measures under the eHealth Strategy, the Confederation and Cantons signed a framework agreement, under which eHealth Suisse was created as a national coordination centre on 1 January 2008. From that time, eHealth Suisse was responsible for implementation of the eHealth Strategy. Accordingly, eHealth Suisse’s broad-based project organisation started work during 2008 with representation from all relevant stakeholders (Swiss Medical Association and doctors, hospitals, Cantons, professional associations, industry and patient and consumer organisations). Responsibility at strategic level lay with eHealth Suisse’s steering committee, which was chaired by the Head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA), while operational responsibility was assumed by the project management committee.
The project organisation was divided into six workstreams:
- Online services and empowerment
- Education and research
- Pilot trials and public-private partnership (subsequently: Development and networking)
- Standards and architecture
- Legal aspects
- Financing and incentive systems
One working group made up of stakeholders in the topic was deployed for each workstream. Between 2009 and 2014, these working groups developed recommendations, each of which went through a broad consultation process beforehand. The recommendations covered those topics that would have to be considered for the future interoperability of the national EPR in the broadest sense: not only technical considerations, but also political, legal, semantic and organisational matters.
The online services and empowerment workstream drew up recommendations on empowering patients to manage medical information (health literacy) and use the new IT tools (digital literacy). The workstream also produced a report describing several options for a public health portal. In January 2012, the Confederation and Cantons decided to forego the portal on resource grounds.
The aim of the education and research workstream was to examine the measures and modifications that would be necessary in educational offerings for healthcare professionals to accommodate modern-day information and communication technology requirements. The workstream also examined the integration of this content into the relevant teaching and study programmes.
The pilot trials and PPP (public-private partnership) workstream formulated recommendations for eHealth pilot trials and the conditions that have to be fulfilled for them to succeed. Pilot trialling was intended to generate insights for the future national Electronic Patient Record (EPR). A scheme developed by the workstream gave pilot projects the option of being evaluated by eHealth Suisse and of obtaining a label if found to be suitable.
The standards and architecture workstream examined and recommended standards in the broad sense (technical, content-related and semantic) that are required to set up a national architecture for the EPR. This workstream laid the foundations for fundamental decisions that still underpin the EPR today – its distributed architecture, adoption of non-proprietary standards at technical level (IHE profiles) and high-granularity patient management of the EPR that promotes informational autonomy.
The legal aspects and financing and incentive systems workstreams identified a legal framework within which eHealth could established despite competencies being split between the Confederation and Cantons. Thought was also given to the measures and incentives that could be used to fund and drive forward the EPR. The preliminary work done by the legal aspects workstream was used by the eHealth expert group deployed by the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) in December 2009. Its task was to establish which areas of eHealth the Confederation would be able to regulate under the existing constitutional provisions and which would become the responsibility of the Cantons. A preliminary draft of the Federal Act on the Electronic Patient Record (EPRA) was put out to consultation in 2011. In April 2012, the Federal Council commissioned the FDHA to produce a dispatch and draft act on the EPR. This dispatch and draft act were submitted to Parliament in May 2015. Parliament adopted EPRA in June 2015.
External link: Federal Council business
External link: EPRA bill 2010–2017
While this work was in progress, eHealth Suisse began to lay the technical foundations for the EPR in 2014/15 in the form of specifications, which it drew up in partnership with the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). These specifications provided the foundations for the Ordinance on EPRA, which was heard during the first half of 2016. The Ordinance took effect on 15 April 2017. At its heart is the certification process for communities and core communities as amalgamated service providers with an obligation to provide
EPRs.
In terms of semantics, SNOMED CT was adopted as the national reference terminology in 2016. Since then, eHealth Suisse has been operating the associated Release Center.
From February 2009 to the end of 2018, eHealth Suisse was also actively involved in the European efforts to establish Europe-wide infrastructure intended to ensure secure exchange of patients’ medical data across national boundaries. A National Contact Point was set up and operated at Geneva University Hospital for this purpose as part of involvement in various EU projects. At the end of 2018, the European Commission (EC) dispensed with Switzerland’s contributions for political reasons.