Introduction

The pan-Canadian Patient Summary - Companion Guide to Use Cases & Definitions, is a companion document to the pan-Canadian Patient Summary Interoperability Specification that presents the broader context for clinical, business, interoperability and solution development considerations that were discovered during the development of the PS-CA. It defines the healthcare problem that the PS-CA addresses and includes healthcare use cases and interoperability requirements in terms that will be traceable to the content in the pan-Canadian Patient Summary - Companion Guide to Reference Architecture, which defines the actors and their interactions with other actors and the pan-Canadian Patient Summary – FHIR Implementation Guide, which defines the contents and semantic interoperability of the PS-CA. 

This document will also support upcoming releases and roadmap elements of the PS-CA specification.

Intended Audience

The intended audience of the Use Cases & Definitions includes, but is not limited to, the following: 

• Non-technical decision makers
• IT departments of healthcare institutions (technical product managers, IT managers, operations staff)
• Technical staff of vendors participating in the IHE initiative
• Experts involved in standards development
• Individuals and teams responsible for implementing software solutions such as project managers, CTOs, CISOs, software engineers, technical product managers, IT managers, operations staff, and other similar roles.

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to present the use cases and definitions for the Patient Summary-CA project, including:

• the Patient Summary-CA definition
• clinical benefits and value of the Patient Summary-CA, as described by Canadian health care providers
• use cases and scenarios and
• interoperability and solution requirements, categorized as:
  • Business and Legal,
  • Information and Semantic; and
  • Technical.