Europe – October 31, 2026 -- Structured cross-border exchange of priority health information becomes a requirement in Europe from 2029 under the European Health Data Space, and IT services provider CGI is urging healthcare leaders to prioritize interoperability over adding new platforms.
CGI lists 10 actions to close the gap between digital tools and patient journeys
Healthcare organizations are investing in electronic health records, patient portals, cloud platforms, virtual care and AI. According to CGI, digital capabilities are advancing faster than connected care. Patients still repeat their medical history, while clinicians duplicate documentation and move between systems.
The first recommendation is to capture information once, in structured, machine-readable form, with clear rules for ownership, provenance, quality, versioning and access. CGI says it has converted extensive patient records into structured, pseudonymized timelines covering medication and social-service activities.
Procurement should require FHIR interfaces and documented APIs
CGI recommends making FHIR interfaces, structured export, portability and documented APIs standard procurement criteria, alongside functionality, cost, usability and security. This would give providers more control over information flows and reduce vendor lock-in. It would also make it easier to introduce new services, AI or analytics.
Pohde adds AI speech recognition to clinical documentation
CGI supported the Wellbeing Services County of North Ostrobothnia (Pohde) in integrating AI-powered speech recognition into clinical documentation. Doctors dictate directly into the text field and review and correct the result immediately. This reduces transcription queues and back-and-forth communication.
CGI advises starting AI with defined, measurable problems. It names clinical documentation, information retrieval, discharge summaries, coding support, prioritization and operational planning as candidate areas.
Hybrid architecture keeps critical workloads close to care
Under CGI's proposed hybrid model, clinically critical workloads stay near care delivery. Governed cloud capabilities handle analytics, AI development, research and collaboration. CGI also calls for governed test environments where AI and analytics are validated for data quality, security, clinical relevance, performance, human oversight and accountability before they connect to production systems.
Outcome metrics replace deployment counts
CGI argues that counts of applications, interfaces, cloud workloads or AI pilots reveal little about transformation success. It proposes tracking whether duplicate entries are falling, whether professionals spend less time on documentation, whether relevant information is available during transitions of care, and whether patients can navigate the system more easily.
The recommendations draw on the July 2026 Interop Council paper on patient portals working with primary systems and the German electronic patient record (ePA).