The lower saxony bank of health. rationale, principles, services, organization and architectural framework.

Introduction: This article is part of a Focus Theme of METHODS of Information in Medicine on Health Record Banking.

Background: Poor communication of health care information between health care providers (HCP) is still a major problem. One recent approach is the concept of Health Record Banking.

A Regional health care network: eHealth.Braunschweig. Domain fields and architectural challenges.

Background: Health care network eHealth.Braunschweig has been started in the South-East region of Lower Saxony in Germany in 2009. It composes major health care players, participants from research institutions and important local industry partners.

eHealth vision towards cooperative patient care--domain fields and architectural challenges of regional health care networks.

Numerous eHealth projects and efforts to establish inter-organizational communication and to build up regional health care networks could be observed in the last ten years. Nevertheless the success of such efforts is profoundly different. The aim of this paper is to introduce the lately started regional initiative eHealth.