An implementation guide for a CDA report about cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) results in the Austrian health record

In this article we present an answer to the question how difficult might it be, to define a working CDA report that fulfills the requirements of the Austrian specifications of the nationwide electronic health record called ELGA. We chose the results of standardized cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) results as an example document. We therefore analyzed existing documentation and interviewed sport scientists and medical doctors to find out how this type of medical documentation is best structured and what data must be and can optionally be included. We then worked out the appropriate elements of a CDA report for levels 2 and 3. Only one adaptation had to be made to the official Austrian health records stylesheet, which was necessary to be able to integrate scalable vector graphic (SVG) images. After this project we can conclude, that the time and technical effort to construct documents for the nationwide Austrian electronic health record is quite little. The biggest problem still might be to obtain a consensus of all involved parties when trying to define an official report, which was not necessary in our case.