Health Data Standards & Developers

General standards developers

There are officially recognised bodies that develop standards, called standards development organisations (SDOs). SDOs usually work across multiple countries, for example at a European or global level. They are almost always not-for-profit organisations who seek to be independent of any vested interest in the manufacture or the purchase and use of health ICT products.

ISO develops most standards in all kinds of domains.

Standards are also developed by other groups such as trade unions or associations, but also making sure that their activities are non-profit and free from the best interests of anyone company.

Major SDO’s at a world-wide level

- International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
- World Health Organisation (WHO)

Major SDO's at a European level

- European Committee for Standardisation (CEN)
- European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (Cenelec)
- European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)

Health standards developers

There are over 40 different SDOs in the health IT arena. Some entities create standards, such as Health Level Seven (HL7), Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) International, and the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC).

Other entities, like Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), rather bundle complementary standards into implementation guides that describe how multiple standards can be used together for specific functions or use cases. This helps drive adoption of the base standards to support interoperable health information exchange.