Data Exchange Standards in Teleophthalmology: Current and Future Developments

Background: Teleophthalmology services are considered capable of supporting screening, early diagnosis, and monitoring of leading causes of blindness on a global scale. Therefore, standards and best practices are needed to seamlessly exchange medical ocular images and related data among relevant stakeholders with maximum interoperability. Objectives: This paper provides an overview of current standards in the field of store-and-forward teleophthalmology data exchange and further developments in this area. Methods: A literature review was conducted for healthcare standards with a focus on data exchange in ophthalmology. Results: IHE, HL7 FHIR, DICOM, and clinical terminologies are considered the most important standards, providing distinct concepts, solutions, and guidelines for ophthalmology. Conclusion: Available standards provide the necessary base for teleophthalmology on technical and semantic interoperability, but practical use is limited due to missing process interoperability resulting in proprietary interfaces of vendors and rejection by ophthalmologists. Further investigations should analyze processual needs on ophthalmology data exchange standards.