The use of eHealth standards in Norway - A brief history
 

Introduction
In 1990 KITH  was established in order to contribute to coordinated and cost-efficient application of secure information technology in the health sector. According to its statutes, KITH should establish the standards necessary for safe communication within the Norwegian health sector and between the health sector and actors outside this sector.
 
The European Health Informatics Committee CEN/TC251 was established in the same year as KITH and Norwegian delegates have participated actively from the start both in the committee, the working groups and in a number of the projects and Task Forces that has drafted the standards.
 
One of the main challenges for CEN/TC251 in the early years was that there hardly were any existing solutions that could form the basis for health informatics communication standards. In order to gain experience, CEN/TC251 therefore produced pre-standards which were to be tried out in the CEN member states. Using the feed-back from the national implementations the pre-standards could then be revised into full European Standards.