Our members are comprised of representatives from Standards Development Organisations, Related organisations in Health and Care, and Individual experts.

Standards Development Organisations

The Observation Health Data Sciences and Informations UK (OHDSI UK)

The Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (or OHDSI, pronounced "Odyssey") program is a multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary collaborative to bring out the value of health data through large-scale analytics.

OHDSI is responsible for the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM). This is an open community data standard, designed to standardize the structure and content of observational data and to enable efficient analyses that can produce reliable evidence.

Mission: To improve health by empowering a community to collaboratively generate the evidence that promotes better health decisions and better care.

Vision: A world in which observational research produces a comprehensive understanding of health and disease.

The aims of OHDSI UK national node include:

  • To adopt OHDSI’s mission, vision, and values
  • To facilitate the coordination of national members at a national and international level with OHDSI and other partners
  • To promote the OHDSI mission in the UK in collaboration with relevant national stakeholders including academia, healthcare organizations, HTA agencies, regulators, patient organizations, policy makers, clinical guideline developers and pharmaceutical and life science industry
  • To initiate and/or collaborate in relevant national research collaborations and co-ordination with European and global OHDSI initiatives
  • To organize training programs in the field of Health Data Sciences and related areas
  • To engage with the European and global OHDSI leadership

The Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB)

The Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB), works to ensure that health and care professionals have the right information at the right time to support the people they care for.

PRSB does this by developing national standards for health and care records, working closely with people who use services, clinicians, and the teams who design and build digital systems. PRSB’s clear, consistent standards help information flow safely across services, supporting better care, safer decisions, and more joined-up services for everyone.

PRSB:

  • is an independent, not for profit, community interest company.
  • uniquely represents clinical, social care and people.
  • is UK-wide, developing health and care standards across the four nations.
  • standards identify the critical set of information needed for safe and high quality care.
  • supports implementation of standards, helping health and care staff embed standards into everyday practice.
  • has the goal is that people will only have to share information once, and their records will be available in every care setting including at home..

GS1 UK

GS1 UK is one of 120 independent GS1 standards organisations operating worldwide. Our unique standards help organisations to uniquely identify, describe and track anything- creating greater trust in data for everyone.

 

In healthcare, GS1 standards are used to uniquely identify every person, every product and every place. Data is commonly captured in a barcode which when scanned, extracts the relevant data at the point of care or use. Data is captured in near real time and in a standardised format, so that it is accurate, consistent and interoperable.

 

Using GS1 standards, healthcare products, medical devices and assets can be traced through the supply chain from the point of manufacture, directly to the patient at the point of care. This decreases transcription errors and reduces the risk of harm to patients, all helping to improve patient safety, reduce unwarranted clinical variation and drive operational efficiencies across industry.

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise UK (IHE UK)

IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) is an initiative by healthcare providers and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. The Industry/Healthcare partnership provides a strong backdrop to implement both useful and implementable standards. IHE promotes the coordinated use of established standards to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. Existing standards are used by preference (HL7, DICOM, FHIR) and specific web services extensions are created by IHE where necessary (XDS, MHDS …) Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate with one another better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively.

 

IHE works by producing Profiles; collections of rules for the standardised use of the existing standards and the IHE extensions. They follow a web services architectural paradigm relying heavily in the Publish-Subscribe mechanism for data sharing and interoperability.

IHE is an international organisation. IHE Europe provides a strong and active European development including working with IHE UK to ensure local requirements are able to drive the global development of profiles.

Health Level 7 UK (HL7UK)

Health Level Seven® International (HL7®) is the global authority on standards for interoperability of health technology with members in over 55 countries.

 

HL7 UK looks after HL7 activities in the UK and its mission is “To support the development, promotion implementation of HL7 Standards in ways which meet the needs of healthcare organisations, health professionals and healthcare software suppliers in the United Kingdom”.

FHIR® – Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources – is a next generation standards framework created by HL7. FHIR combines the best features of HL7’s v2, v3 and CDA product lines whilst utilising the latest web standards and emphasising implementability. The UK has implementation guidance in the form of “FHIR UK Core”.

The British Standards Institution (BSI)

Founded in 1901, the British Standards Institution (BSI) is the UK's National Standards Body. It coordinates the UK's contributions to international standards development, publishes European and International standards in English (BS EN/BS ISO/BS IEC), creates commissioned standards (Publicly Available Specifications, PAS) for UK interests, and provides certification services for organizations worldwide.

 

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards are particularly important as they are designed to facilitate international trade by ensuring that technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures are non-discriminatory and do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade, in line with the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT).

 

BSI operates a set of UK committees that 'shadow' their ISO counterparts and coordinate UK involvement in standards development. For instance, IST/35 is the shadow committee for ISO/TC 215 Health Informatics. IST/35 members play a significant role in ISO/TC 215, most notably in project leadership for ISO 13940 (System of Concepts for Continuity of Care), the ISO 13606 series (communication of care record extracts), ISO 27269 (International Patient Summary), and the liaison between openEHR International and ISO.

 

IST/35 fosters dialogue between CHASCIS and ISO. Through the PAS mechanism, it publishes coherent specifications for adopting overlapping international and community standards, enabling UK Health Informatics companies to demonstrate compliance with these specifications.

openEHR UK

openEHR UK is a Community Interest Company (CIC) formed to promote the adoption of the openEHR standard within the United Kingdom. As part of the openEHR International Affiliate Programme, it works towards increasing awareness, adoption, and engagement with the openEHR ecosystem.

openEHR UK is dedicated to:

  • Developing open, vendor-neutral platforms for electronic health records (EHR), clinical, and research data.
  • Supporting the interoperability and shareability of health data through openEHR specifications, clinical models, and software.
  • Educating and engaging with the UK healthcare community, ensuring that the openEHR standard is widely understood and implemented.

openEHR UK operates independently but remains connected to openEHR International via the Affiliate Programme Board (APB). Key elements including a self-governing UK CIC with a Board and co-Chairs serving a two-year term, and a membership model where UK members must also be members of openEHR International, with an additional category of "Supporters" who provide financial or in-kind contributions.

openEHR is a global, standards-based approach to EHRs, working closely with CEN, ISO, HL7, and others. Key benefits include:

  • Semantic interoperability through openEHR archetypes.
  • Separation of data from applications, enabling long-term data reusability and reducing vendor lock-in.
  • Compliance with privacy and security regulations (e.g., GDPR), allowing fine-grained control over health data access.

By fostering an ecosystem that prioritises open, interoperable, and patient-centric health records, openEHR UK aims to drive digital transformation in the UK health sector while ensuring high-quality patient outcomes.

Technology Strategy Architecture and Standards (TSAS)

Technology Strategy Architecture and Standards (TSAS) is a NHS England initiative focused on building an open, transparent, and standardised digital ecosystem for healthcare. It involves a "listening exercise" to engage stakeholders and guide the development of national technology architecture, ensuring digital services are secure, interoperable, and user-focused. 

 

Key Aspects of TSAS and Related NHS Standards:

  • Architecture & Standards: TSAS aims to establish, document, and enforce technical and information standards across the NHS to promote consistency and interoperability.
  • Digital Principles: The framework promotes cloud-first, internet-first, and open-source strategies, alongside using API-first development for data.
  • Clinical Safety: TSAS aligns with mandatory clinical risk management standards (DCB0129 and DCB0160) to ensure digital products do not compromise patient safety.
  • Technology Enabled Care (TEC): Specific referral guidance has been developed to integrate technology-enabled care into urgent community responses (UCR).
  • Data Governance: TSAS works within a larger data governance structure (Data Alliance Partnership Board) that ensures standards are legally and technically sound. 

 

This initiative is part of a broader push to modernize NHS IT infrastructure, transitioning towards secure cloud environments and ensuring that digital tools are effective, sustainable, and meet the needs of both staff and patients.

The UK Terminology and Classifications Delivery Service

One function that TSAS delivers is the UK Terminology and Classifications delivery service. The Terminology and Classifications delivery service develops and maintains products that enable health and care information to be recorded, shared and categorised.

 

The service publishes, develops and/or maintains clinical coding systems of which there are two types: terminologies and classifications. 

 

These are used to record or categorise health and social care information into codes that support care delivery, statistical analysis, research and the reimbursement of health and care providers.

The coding systems that fall within the remit of this service include:

  • SNOMED CT UK Clinical Edition.
  • International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision (ICD-10) 
  • International Classifications of Diseases for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, Eleventh Revision (ICD-11)
  • OPCS-4 Intervention and Procedure Classification.

Related Organisations

INTEROPen

INTEROPen is an open collaboration of individuals, industry, standards organisations, professional bodies and health and care providers who have agreed to work together to accelerate the adoption of open standards for interoperability in the health and social care sector.

 

Governed by a board of representatives with Co-Chairs from the supplier and service communities alongside over 2000 members; including representatives from techUK and over 160 vendor organisations, Standards Development Organisations, Digital Health Networks, The Professional Records Standards Board (PRSB), Arm’s Length bodies, Provider organisations, IT and Clinical Professional Bodies, Charities, and individuals we are committed to putting commercial interests aside and drive development for the adoption of open interoperability standards. 

 

Everyone’s work with INTEROPen today is provided pro bono.

BCS

The BCS is the Chartered Institute for IT and has a large number of members in its recently created Faculty of Health and Care (BCS Health and Care). The Faculty was established during a merger with the former Faculty of Informatics (FCI) which was independent body unrelated to the BCS.

 

Membership of BCS Health and Care includes IT professionals, clinical informaticians and other individuals from frontline health and care organisations as well as industry, academia and so on.

 

BCS Health and Care has been active in the field of information standards for some years and our aim is to help members in their work and to develop their careers. We do this by running events, representing views of the community - particularly when consultations are being run, and collaborating with other stakeholder bodies.

The Care Software Providers Association (CASPA)

The Care Software Providers Association (CASPA), is an independent association representing the views and interests of social care software providers.

The objectives of CASPA are:

  • The promotion and continued growth of the use of digital technologies in the social care sector to improve the quality of care delivered
  • Promoting advances in the digital information flow across social care to provide openness and transparency of care being provided
  • Lobbying parties outside social care to improve the digital information flow between social care and others, in particular the NHS
  • Creating standards, such as those for electronic information transfer, where such standards do not currently exist
  • To create a framework to assist in providing service continuity for members customers

Individual Experts.

In addition to our member organisations, we are supported by a number of individual experts contributing specialist knowledge.

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