PDF Healthcare

PDF is a file format that can be used to send or receive information during the process of the health information exchange. In other words , PDF's are being used in healthcare as "capsules" or "containers" to include or attach images or information for sending or receiving purposes. The PDF Healthcare Best Practices Guide is a result of the a working group, co chaired by INtel and Adobe that has decided to submit PDF Healthcare to the ASTM (American Society fo Testing and Materials International and the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM)for balloting to demonstrate that it's compatible with CCR (Continuity of Care Record as proposed by ASTM and Health Level Seven's Clinical Document Architecture (CDA).
The best practices guide is tailored to the healthcare industry and describes use of fonts, metadata, security and the way PDF is used. It is generally agreed that PDF is a format this is very consistent with the ultimate goals of standardization. Additionally, security can be enhanced with PDF by embedding paswords and permissions on the dcoument.

Clearly, the advantages are: familiarity, and also that PDF uses XML (extensible markup language) standards, so that you can incorporate xml data into and as a standardized data set within the PDF. So, as a result, it is now being developed and proposed to put the CCR XML inside of a pdf . Thus the pdf can either be printed off in the event the end user does not have EMR (electronic medical records) or if they do have EMR, the emr can extact the CCR XML data to populate the EMR.

This can be used for PHR's and EMR's.