In Belgian general practice, medical software is able to extract the 'clinical summary files' of patients from their health records. These files are called the 'Summarised Electronic Health Records' (SumEHR). The Belgian eHealth platform has developed a validation tool whose aim is to enable physicians to check the conformity of a given SumEHR with the applicable specification before its export. 

The SumEHR is intended to be shared among several care givers; it contains the minimum set of relevant medical data providing physicians with a synthetic picture of a patient's medical status and it is thus key to ensuring continuity of care. The summaries are exported in the form of a KHMER ('Kind Messages for Electronic Healthcare Record') message.

The newly published 'SumEHR Validation Tool' makes it possible to verify:

• The correctness of the SumEHR's syntax;
• Whether the SumEHR in use indeed conforms with the specification published on the eHealth platform.

In addition, if the SumEHR is compliant, the tool allows a non Information Technology (IT) specialist to view it. Lastly, in case the SumEHR that was generated is not correct, it is possible to check the error report.

All documents needed for the installation of the tool may be retrieved from the technical library of the Belgian eHealth platform, in zip format. It is worth noting that the tool makes use of the latest version of the XSchema KHMER. 

Any questions are to be directed to the eHealth Contact Centre via the dedicated contact form.

Background information:

The Belgian eHealth platform has as its mission to verify, among other elements, "whether the software for the management of computerised patient file complies with the functional and technical ICT norms, standards and specifications" and to register such software.

 

Further information: 

• Original news article - Belgian eHealth platform (in Dutch and in French)
• Summarised Electronic Healthcare Record (SumEHR) v1.1 - Link to the specification
• Technical library of the Belgian eHealth platform (in Dutch and in French)
• XSchema KHMER