The Good European Health Record is a project within the Advanced Informatics in Medicine programme of the European Community. Starting from an existing prototype, its objective is to develop, test and promulgate a common architecture for computerised health records across Europe. The project must ensure that the prototype record is applicable and acceptable across clinical domains, countries and computer systems.

The Good European Health Record architecture aims to provide the framework for the storage of and access to all of the clinical information required for the provision of patient health care. This will involve addressing the comprehensive needs for such a record from many perspectives, but the project will focus primarily on the needs of clinical personnel actively engaged in patient-centred consultations. The architecture will facilitate the rapid retrieval and manipulation of a patient's clinical file, and take into account the need to protect patient confidentiality and to accurately reproduce an ethical and legally binding account of each clinical encounter.
The Good European Health Record is a project which has been designed t develop, test and promulgate a common architecture for computerized health recor Europe. The project must ensure that the prototype record is applicable and acce clinical domains, countries and computer systems.

The major achievements of the are as follows:
promotional tools and awareness strategy (comprising a comprehen containing a summary of the project in 3 languages, a large portfolio of slides show presentation);
a detailed description of computerized health record archite extensive document defining the architecture of the CHRA, together with a list o 5 major languages);
a CHRA demonstration of transfer involving files, laboratory epidemiology datasets (laboratory data were directly incorporated into the appro and then subsets extracted using a commercial general practitioner software for users);
requirements for clinical comprehensiveness (comprising a review of many role and function of clinical records, implications for the clinical requirement comprehensiveness of a future electronic record, bibliographic reviews and the r previous studies);
requirements for portability (this comprises 2 sections, 1 co hardware and software independence of the data structure, and 1 concerned with t from the natural language in which users are working);
(comprising requirements particular drug prescriptions and laboratory data, requirements for handling bul data types considered to be external to the main record, a comprehensive review communication standards).
In order to be clinically comprehensive, the needs of a range of disciplines and specialities are being considered across several countries. To ensure true portability, the record will incorporate the mechanism for the translation of the patient information into different languages, and to accommodate the entry or extraction of data using different contemporary clinical classification systems.

It will be important for the Health Record Architecture to be incorporated into computer systems running on a variety of hardware configurations and operating systems, and that a patient's medical record can be safely transmitted across telecommunications networks or copied onto patient-held data cards.

The challenge is to develop and promulgate the architecture in such a way that it is seen to provide an opportunity for enhanced patient care and software services rather than as a threat.