CEN/TC 251 took the initiative to develop the International Patient Summary (IPS) standard, based on the European Guideline for the cross-border exchange of patient summary data. This resulted in the formal publication of EN 17269 in November 2019. From the beginning, it has been our intention to develop the IPS as a global standard, which is why we submitted our work on the IPS to ISO as well. This led to the publication of ISO 27269 IPS standard in April 2021.
Of course, we don’t want to have competing IPS standards between CEN and ISO, which is why we are currently going through the process of replacing the EN 17269 with the ISO 27269 and have all future development take place jointly between CEN and ISO, “under Vienna Agreement” as it is known in our world. We’re almost there.
Recently an enquiry ballot was launched in CEN to accept prEN ISO 27269:2021 as the ISO standard for Europe, superseding EN 17269: 2019. The ballot opened in 2021-11-18 and closed in 2022-02-19. The CEN enquiry ballot results show that the member bodies approved the transition unanimously with no negative votes; the EN ISO 27269 is now the single European standard for the International Patient Summary.
Five national member bodies took the opportunity to also provide comments on the document, primarily concerning the terms used within the standard and the difficulties in translation. All comments will be addressed in the second edition of ISO 27269, which is now scheduled to follow on from this CEN ballot within ISO TC/215 Working Group 1, and consequently there is currently a ‘call for experts’ that has just been requested by ISO, and this ends on the 11th March 2022.