Alexander Berler , MSc , PhD BME
Strategic Business Development Director IHE Catalyst
Alexander Berler , has an MSc in Biomedical Engineering and a PhD in Medical Informatics . He has worked at Information Society SA , the Greek official governmental information technology project office , as a Project Director responsible for large healthcare informatics projects of the Greek government until 2006 . He is currently the Consulting Services Director at Gnomon Informatics SA . He is also acting as the strategic business development director on behalf of IHE Catalyst AISBL , promoting the use and testing of international standards via the IHE Technical frameworks and Integration profiles . He is the Past Chair of HL7 Hellas ( 2011-2020 ), and currently the vice chair of HL7 Hellas , the Greek HL7 International Affiliate .
" Standardisation of Health Information Exchange as an Enabler to the Digital Transformation of Health Care "
The Speech analysed the complexity of healthcare and the needs for digital transformation to enable national healthcare systems that can overcome the current challenges in healthcare . Then I presented the need for standardization in health information exchange to enable the creation of digital health networks were data and information are flowing in order to fulfill the medical and clinical procedures necessary to provide a high quality of care . The presentation also presented the recent strategies and policies in the European Union that envision to create high quality healthcare services for all European citizens . The EU is fostering on establishing by 2030 a European Health Data Space ( EHDS ) that will enable cross border healthcare services but also an ethical framework for secondary use of data for research . In this context the importance of the European Electronic Healthcare Record Exchange format ( EEHRxF ) is paramount for the implementation of the EHDS . A newly proposed regulation for the implementation of the EHDS envisions to certify all EHRs in Europe according the the EEHRxF . The presentation then dives into the pragmatic approaches of the organization called Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise ( IHE ) and its operational branch IHE Catalyst AISBL that provides support to all the members of the HIE ecosystem , namely vendors and users . Several examples of concrtete support services are described in several countries and institutions around the globe with an emphasis of creating adequate interoperability specifications based on international standards and integration profiles that can be tested via a set of open source tools called IHE Gazelle .