The ISO TC 215 Health Informatics Committee has developed a two part technical reference document: ISO /TR 14639 Health informatics — Capacity-based eHealth architecture roadmap that can be applied to support the development of Telehealth systems.

• Part 1: Overview of national eHealth initiatives – presents a description of contemporary national enterprise-wide Health Information Systems from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Kenya and India. The resulting landscape identifies key high-level categories for different aspects of eHealth systems.
• Part 2: Architectural components and maturity model – provides a guide to best practice business requirements and principles for countries and their subordinate health authorities planning and implementing the use of information and communications technology (ICT) to support the delivery and development of healthcare. The eHealth architecture model is described in terms of its components and capabilities that health organisations may use as a framework for building their own eHealth architectures and also for measuring the maturity of their health systems’ use of ICT to support the delivery and development of healthcare.

ISO TR 14639-2 was developed with a particular view to support low & middle income countries, but it can also be a useful guide for any country. Highly developed countries may still find useful advice on architectural components to achieve a total eHealth system.