By Stephen Kay, Giorgio Cangioli and Michael Nusbaum:
“The international patient summary and the extensibility requirement”
published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics: 2020
In proceedings of pHealth, (Eds. B. Blobel et al) September 2020. Published online with Open Access by IOS Press) pp54-62 
The International Patient Summary Standard (EN 17269) normalizes the dataset within the European Guideline on cross-border exchange of a patient summary. This dataset has been widely appreciated and been taken as the basis for projects in both Europe and wider afield, e.g., U.S.A, Canada and more. The dataset is a relatively mature dataset and it is currently in its third iteration (i.e., 2013, 2016, 2020). Even so, to move from a policy-driven guideline to a formal standard was not straight forward. The paper describes how the ‘minimal and non-exhaustive’ dataset could be the basis for a reference standard; one that was intended to facilitate both an ‘implementable’ and ‘sustainable’ solution. In particular, the requirement of ‘extensibility’ for the standard dataset had to be addressed.
