Home

The NEMSIS TAC and IHE USA have partnered to improve data interoperability between emergency medical services (EMS) and the rest of healthcare.

Historically, EMS has been left out of national healthcare data interoperability efforts. EMS providers rarely have real-time electronic access to the medical history of their patients, EMS patient care reports (PCRs) are rarely available within the electronic health records (EHRs) of the hospitals to which EMS transports patients, and EMS rarely receives electronic notification of the hospital outcomes of their patients.

The aims of the EMS interoperability project are to foster the development of software infrastructure to achieve widespread:

• Ability for EMS providers to access patient medical history information during a 911 call.
• Electronic transfer of EMS PCRs into hospital EHRs.
• Ability for EMS providers to retrieve hospital outcomes for their patients.
• Inclusion of hospital outcome data in patient care reports submitted by EMS providers to their states and the national EMS database.

The NEMSIS XML data standard has been highly successful within the EMS industry at standardizing the structure, content, and transport method for EMS PCRs. The NEMSIS standard has been designed with existing healthcare data standards in mind, including HL7, ICD-10, LOINC, RxNorm, and SNOMED-CT. However, more work is needed to fully integrate NEMSIS-compliant software systems with the systems used throughout the rest of healthcare.

This repository and wiki are a work in progress intended to document our findings and recommendations for EMS interoperability. Topics include:

• Governmental and regulatory environment
• Data exchange partners and networks
• Interoperability workflow
• Patient identification and record matching in the EMS environment
• Data transport standards (APIs)
• Data content standards
• Data elements to be shared
• Incorporating hospital outcomes into NEMSIS documents

Please join the EMS Task Force Google Group to follow and contribute to the project.