The OpenHIE initiative grew out of the RHEA project, where a Health Information Exchange has been developed to support maternal health in Rwanda. More information about this project and the HIE implementation is available here . The Shared Health Record was designed and developed for this project and has been implemented and is currently operational in one district of Rwanda.
Following the roll-out of the RHIE in Rwanda, our community was tasked with reviewing and evaluating what makes a good shared health record, including a review of the current tool, and to determine what technologies best suit an SHR for our purposes. The objective was to provide a recommendation of whether we should use/modify an existing technology or build something ourselves, with the ultimate aim of providing a generic SHR that is appropriate for use in low-resource settings.
The evaluation
The process and methodology we used to evaluate options for an interoperability layer were:
Document use cases and requirements for a Interoperability Layer
SHR - Use Cases and Requirements
Performance test the current OpenHIM used in RHEA in order to ensure the OpenHIM is scalable to national level
Interoperability Layer Performance Analysis
Estimated load figure for a Rwandan national deployment
Create a tool to evaluate how well the Interoperability Layer software meets the requirements
- SHR Evaluation Tool
Compile a list of software that could be used as an interoperability layer
- SHR - Tools for review
Evaluate list software options using the evaluation tool
- SHR Evaluation Tool
Write up results of the evaluation and come to consensus on a recommended way forward i.e. whether to use or modify an existing tool or build from scratch.
SHR options and recommendation
The final recommendation