Slovenia

Current Logo

Old Logo

Year of establishment

2014

Number of members

The number of members varies slightly over years but currently we have 7 corporate members and 10 individuals.

Current Chair

Current chair is dr. Brane Leskosek, EE, he is long term involved in bio(medical)informatics in academic environment as senior researcher, PI of many, especially EU, projects and as teacher at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Medicine and other healthcare related schools. Currently he is mostly occupied in setting up national research infrastructure for life-science information as a part of European distributed research infrastructure ELIXIR. A major part of this research infrastructure is data management through establishment of national node of federated european genome-phenome archive that will accept research as well as clinical data in a standard formats following the FAIR principles. He is also national scientific representative in the EU declaration of 1 Million Genomes by 2022.

Bibliography, see https://bib.cobiss.net/biblioweb/biblio/si/eng/cris/15355

What are some highlights and major achievements - since establishment

The goal of HL7 Slovenia is promotion and the establishment of reliable and practically useful national health information standards (normative documents, regulations, recommendations, etc.) for the exchange, management and integration of data that support the treatment of patients and provision of other healthcare services. HL7 Slovenia helps to establish flexible and cost-effective conditions, standards, guidelines, methodologies and similar services that bring interoperability, localization, compatibility and effectiveness of health information systems and electronic health records (EHRs).

The goal of HL7 Slovenia is to provide a reference point for dissemination of health information standards in Slovenia in accordance with the rules and restrictions defined by HL7 International.

The goal of HL7 Slovenia is also to connect all the stakeholders in the standardization of health information systems (particularly in the area of the HL7 standards), and by this to coordinate the development of content, the quest for quality and modern ways of work in design, deployment and training in the field of health information standards.

Major technical activity of the HL7 Slovenia affiliate is to rise the awareness and importance of medical informatics standards in clinical environment and help setting up common national guidelines and regulations for clinical/medical information systems and EHRs in Slovenia that will allow effective electronic data interoperability and information exchange between them and possibly with other countries IS. In technical sense we closely collaborate with software vendors with the aim to allow equal access to patient data by any healthcare professional when needed in a safe and secure way and following the GDPR regulations. To fulfill these objectives, the HL7 Slovenia deals with the following tasks/working groups:

Standardization activities

• Customization and localization of HL7 standards in relation to local and regional requirements and in accordance with the rules and restrictions of HL7.
• Amendments of HL7 standards according to national requirements and in accordance with the rules and restrictions of HL7.
• Participation in the formulation of the code lists, dictionaries, and the nomenclatures in accordance with the rules and restrictions of HL7.
• Participation in the formulation of data models and data sets corresponding with the generic HL7 standards.
• Creation of the strong connections with international and domestic standardization organizations.
• Provision of answers to specific questions related to standardization in general and particularly to HL7.

Promotion, education, training, development and consultancy

• Organization of lectures, courses, workshops, consultations, discussions, seminars, conferences for its members and the interested public with special emphasis on HL7 standards.
• Publishing and editing of professional, educational and scientific literature and educational materials in the fields of health standardization.

Monitoring

• Systematic collection of information on products, technologies, projects and initiatives related to standardization and especially to HL7.
• Monitoring of the development of experiences and good practices related to the health information standards, especially HL7 standards.

Certification

• Promotion, support and coordination of the formulation of professional guidelines and indicators / criteria for evaluating systems that would be useful in obtaining certificates of quality and compliance with the standards, especially HL7 standards.
• Certification of applications', systems', services, and development tools' compliance with health information standards, especially with HL7 standards.

Research

• Assist in content development, implementation and management of research projects, initiatives and strategies, which require the use of standards, particularly the HL7 standards.

Miscellaneous

• Informing of members and the public about progress and issues from the fields covered by the section.
• Periodic informing of members and the interested public on standards, especially HL7 standards.
• Promotion of the professional development of its members.
• Commitment to compliance with ethical and moral principles of the discipline.
• Commitment to the improving of the members' expertise.
• Participation in the design of educational programs in the fields of section's expertise.
• Co-operation with relevant organizations in the development of Slovenian terminology in the field of (health information) standards.
• Giving suggestions for legislative measures in the field of (health information) standards.
• Collaboration with health care and higher education organizations, IT solution providers, users of IT solutions, and related institutions, societies and associations in Slovenia and abroad, which are pursuing the same or similar goals or are engaged in a similar activities as HL7 Slovenia.
• Cooperate with other related associations and organizations in Slovenia and abroad, including professional, educational, or research organizations.

Project Highlights

• setting up new website as a common entry point for all HL7 services including private members sections with internal documents and access to HL7 international website. The new website location is https://www.hl7.si (currently only in Slovene).

Events, e.g. IHIC

• We are regular co-organiser of yearly meeting of Slovenian Medical Informatics Association (SDMI - https://www.sdmi.si) where HL7 event or section take place. Beside that we organise HL7 awareness and specific training events, mainly on request by members.

Plans for the future

3 years plan

Clinical work in Slovenia is increasingly well-supported by the (clinical) information systems. Unfortunately, the information systems are rarely interconnected. They are seldom able to perform electronic data interchange and are mostly collecting only partially structured data. Relevant governmental organizations and ministries in Slovenia did not do much to set standards in the field of health and biomedical informatics, despite almost ten years of Slovenia's inclusion in the EU and in the European eHealth initiative. In several Western countries a substantial progress was made during this time just by setting national and obeying international standard IT solutions of healthcare that enable much better and outwardly unified operation of health information systems even if they are manufactured by various IT solution providers. The Management Board of the Slovenian Medical Informatics Association (SDMI) is aware of the need for the unified IT solutions and the importance of the nationally imposed health information standards, so it supported the creation of a non-governmental, voluntary, independent and non-profit section HL7 Slovenia, which will deal with the health informatics standardization and cooperate with the largest non-profit organization in the field of health information standards - HL7 International. In the next three years we would like to improve the use of HL7 data collection and interoperability standards in national medical informatics solutions and through that improve the quality of healthcare services for patients. HL7 interoperability standards should be used in all major hospitals and majority of community healthcare centres. Important role in reaching this goal is collaboration and knowledge exchange with regional HL7 affiliates and experts, also through HL7 Europe affiliate.

Aim is to start with organisation of bi-lateral regional community meetings and interoperability hackathons whether as f2f, hybrid or virtual events.

Established genome-phenome archives of research and clinical data and connect them with national healthcare backbone following also the HL7 recommendations and standards.