Digital Preservation of clinical Documents in the context of the Italian Federated Electronic Health Record

Abstract

Digital document reliability, authenticity, integrity and readability over time are essential principles on which the efficiency of healthcare facilities could be measured. Realizing digital preservation in full compliance with regulations is extremely important, especially in a sensitive domain such as healthcare, and above all considering this process in the frame of the Italian Federated Electronic Health Record, namely Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico (FSE). In this paper, we analyze the main issues related to the implementation of an effective and efficient digital preservation system compliant with regulations and of appropriate methods of interaction between digital preservation systems and FSE. Finally, we highlight the importance of defining and enhancing an adequate set of metadata, essential for digital document description and retrieval.