An informal method for identifying standards to enable meaningful exchange of public health records

The key challenges in the area of public health informatics are, the identification of relevant health data sets, its representation and meaningful use of the information for decision making. To make effective use of data represented in Public Health Records, the data needs to be 'seamlessly' shared or be interoperable among health care providers. It is believed that adoption of health care standards will help achieve interoperability. However, analyzing and identifying the standard most suitable for the organization is not a trivial task. The authors propose a simple, informal method to identify the appropriate standard, based on requirements, to achieve interoperability. The method is applied to a real world case study of a Primary Health Care provider in India. A scenario, where an expecting mother needs to be referred to the hospital for a pregnancy related medical condition is considered. The authors model data, analyze and identify standards relevant for interoperable transfer of maternal health information between public health centres and hospitals.