Patient Summary

A patient summary is not a patient’s entire health record, but a portion of it. It’s comprised of a standardized collection of patient information: the necessary minimum and sufficient data to inform a patient’s treatment at a point of care. It may include elements like a patient’s medications, allergies and immunizations.

Patient summaries can help improve:

• Coordination of care and clinical workflow efficiencies
• Health outcomes and patient safety
• Patient and provider experiences
• Information sharing

In situations such as:

• Medical emergencies
• Walk-in visits, where providers are unfamiliar with a patient
• Transitions of care

The pan-Canadian Patient Summary Specification (PS-CA) will allow care solutions to contribute pertinent patient health information into clinical repositories to improve health outcomes and reduce administrative burden for clinicians. 

In October 2022, the first iteration of the PS-CA, based on the IHE International Patient Summary (IPS) specification and the HL7 IPS Implementation Guide, was reviewed and approved. The PS-CA is based on the IPS specification, as defined by IHE, HL7 and ISO/DIS 27269. Both specifications will continue to evolve in parallel as a result of implementer and community feedback, with increased convergence anticipated as the specifications continue to mature. They define building blocks to create and share a condition-independent and speciality-agnostic patient summary.

Because the PS-CA is based upon the IPS, but is not the IPS, the provinces and territories will be able to configure its building blocks to address any necessary variances while ensuring alignment to the IPS specification.