Abstract

The main background for this guideline is the Nordic e-Health Standardization group’s mandate topic which deals with contributing and communicating the initiative of “Reducing clinician burden” (RCB) - initiative. It has become increasingly important to ascertain how one might support healthcare professionals’ daily work and how to facilitate better data quality using e-Health standards. There are also small, nuanced differences between the American-born term RCB versus how to understand the theme in a Nordic context.

This guideline is the result of the collaboration among work group members of the Nordic e-Health Standardization group. The guideline is also anchored in the main group. The work group has also been consulting the Nordic eHealth Research Network’s scientific experts regarding the RCB theme and has received valuable input to the guideline.

Even though a lot of thorough work is being done to globally reduce healthcare professionals’ documentation burden, there are still some distinctive features and needs in the Nordic environments. Furthermore, data quality is increasingly considered important for both primary and secondary use of health data in Nordic countries. The Nordic work group has formulated some principles and recommendations all stakeholders involved in standardization work should follow. They are intended to apply to improving data quality, to support daily work and to contribute to reducing the overall burden of clinical work to healthcare professionals. Principles include general aspects which should be followed by different stakeholders, and which are applicable across many different activities related to the development and use of standards. They constitute the foundation for more detailed recommendations. The recommendations focus on more specific and actionable activities or stakeholder groups.

The work related to this report has received funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers eHealth group and the Sustainable Growth Programme for Finland (RRF) of the Next Generation EU instrument of the European Union.