SPECIALTY FIELDS AND INTEROPERABILITYIT solutions for healthcare of tomorrow have to function in such a way to be able to communicate between each other and also integrate with systems that already exist but live as lonely islands most of the time today.

Developing solutions that can speak this health IT Esperanto have to take into account several international standards or registries. This is the only way to make communication meaningful to all sides involved. A lot of standardization (IHE, HL7, ICD-10, SNOMED CT,…) is taking place and is already available to those that wish to make products that truly work.

…But then you bump into the specialty fields in medicine.

Something one could regard as a pretty straightforward

thing. But in reality it is not the case. The specialty fields

vary from nation to nation, the division of specialties can

be sometimes blurry and can seem fairly arbitrary,

overlapping. It seems strange since medicine today is

very science based, and science itself is very international.

Doctors from all over the world try hard to exchange

knowledge and be cutting edge. But still the specialty

fields remain a bit different and not truly synchronized.

More standards and synchronization means better solutions.

In EU this problem has been addressed already, there is a directive that makes the European “master” division of specialties and maps all the fields in its member countries. It is the Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications and is in force since 2007.

The formal education of future doctors in Europe will be synchronized with this directive and national specialist tests should become European one day.

Often specialty fields are core information around which many processes evolve, so it is good news that such harmonization is taking place.

There are some fields that are empty in the current Directive so it is far from perfect – we may not know directly what each specialization is called in each of the EU countries. But still - a lot of work has already been done and mapping EU to other systems throughout the world is easier then doing it for every country separately.

More standards and synchronization means better solutions that will be able to work more and more seamlessly. And this is one of the ways to reach user engagement that has proven to be one of the pitfalls of health IT solutions so far.

How come itis like that?

Specialty fields indifferent countries

The formal education of future doctors in Europe will be synchronized withDirective 2005/36/EC.

Česká republika

Hrvatska

Slovenija

Slovensko

Suomi/Finland

Tuberkulóza a respirační nemoci

Pulmologija

PnevmologijaEU =Respiratorymedicine

Pneumológia a ftizeológia

Keuhkosairaudet ja allergologia/Lungsjukdomar och allergologi

Fields in different countries

SPECIALTY FIELDS ANDINTEROPERABILITY

by Matej Lukin