Veratech for Health has participated since 2015 in an important project for healthcare in Uruguay, such as the development of the National Electronic Health Record in Uruguay, in collaboration with the Agency of Electronic Government and Information and Knowledge Society (AGESIC) of the Government of Uruguay, Minsait Uruguay, an Indra company, and salud.uy.

The project consisted of a consultancy for the definition and development of the different models of clinical records, which responded to the institutional needs of the Uruguayan healthcare system and contributed to the continuity of patient care. Minsait participated with the project management and medical professionals for the consultancy and Veratech for Health provided the technical development, with expert consultants such as David Moner, adopting and implementing recognized standards for the representation of electronic health records: ISO 13606 and HL7 CDA, in the process of modeling the clinical documents that are part of the HCEN.

Veratech for Health collaborated with AGESIC to define the structure and content of 14 clinical documents to be shared nationally in Uruguay. In addition, training courses in HL7 CDA and ISO 13606 were conducted. The working team was composed of clinical experts, HL7 CDA and ISO 13606 technicians, clinical terminology experts and a multidisciplinary clinical support team. The first phase included the review of existing documentation, while the second phase included the design of the information models. In the third phase, technical experts converted the specifications into formal, standardized archetypes, while terminology experts defined the subsets of SNOMED CT to be used for clinical data recording. The validation phase included evaluation of the results by end users.

The result of the project includes 14 HL7 CDA Implementation Guide documents, one for each document, including an example instance for each one. It also includes a Template Dictionary document with the technical specifications to implement 78 data structures in the HL7 CDA standard and 94 ISO 13606 archetypes that define the same data structures.

The project strengthens the process of medical record interoperability in Uruguay, as it allows for better delivery of health services to patients and their continuity of care. "This strengthens decision-making and healthcare, as it provides an accurate view of the patient and contributes to increasing the effective time spent by healthcare personnel, reducing the time spent on administrative and control procedures," said Gonzalo Firpo, Minsait's Business Development Manager for the Southern Cone.

Minsait's solutions are part of a portfolio of developed systems that benefit 80 million people in the healthcare sector worldwide, which are used by more than 120,000 professionals in over 5,800 healthcare centers and hospitals that make it possible to formalize some 500,000 medical appointments every day.

Ongoing collaboration between clinical and technical experts was key to the success of the project and to ensuring the quality and relevance of the results. This project marks an important step in the implementation of the National Electronic Health Record in Uruguay and will help to improve medical care in the country.