National meta-data standards needed

Developing national meta-data standards to index imaging data and other documents is critical to improving compatibility and integration between systems, experts have said.

At the UK Radiological Congress in Manchester last week, speakers called for standardised guidelines for meta-data – used to index data for later retrieval – to be developed in greater detail.

Dave Harvey, managing director at Medical Connections, told the audience he is trying to coordinate a national meta-data guidance group to make sure that interoperable systems are “as compatible as local politics will allow”.

Harvey told EHI the aim of the group is to develop standardised guidelines for indexing documents, which will allow for “bottom-up” integration with improved compatibility between different systems.

“Rather than the failed approach of saying, ‘we’re going to buy from the big boys, and you’re going to make it work’, you’re going to the other extreme with local projects doing what works and sharing between them.”

Harvey said the group is working with standards experts, vendors, suppliers, and the Health and Social Care Information Centre to develop the guidelines, which will be “speciality-agnostic” rather than focusing solely on imaging.

The current focus is on developing meaningful use cases to show how the standards could be used in the healthcare sector to improve integration for smaller projects, he said.

“You’ll get trusts working on these projects, but when they try to do any sharing between them, they find the data models don’t work. There’s a better chance of integrating if you start with at least vaguely similar data models.”

Dominic Kirkman, lead healthcare solution architect at Perceptive Software, told the audience at UKRC that developing meta-data standards will allow trusts to make the most of cross-enterprise document sharing and other systems specifications.

 “Even when you can use those things, it’s easier if they all use the same meta-data model. The metadata has to be the driver, and it needs to be considered across the whole enterprise, not just for radiology.

“I think we need to have a look at the meta-data model and do it as a group, because there’s a huge amount of expertise now.”

Kirkman said putting meta-data standards in place could eventually give clinicians greater flexibility in which applications and software they use.

“These days, we talk about ‘bring your own device’ and how you secure those, but I think the ultimate goal has to be ‘bring your own application’.

“If you have a clinician who particularly likes GE, they can use that, while another might be using Fujifilm, but to do that the data has to be in a standard format and it has to have the meta-data.”