The report detailed the specific barriers preventing the adoption of common standards. Political barriers include a lack of government support and incentives to change, there are also Standards Development Organisation (SDO) barriers such as the competition between different organisations, company barriers as different standards can be profitable for businesses and finally ICT user barriers such as the price and complications of converting data.
The potential benefits of standardisation such as economic growth, savings for healthcare service providers and improved service quality were also emphasised in the report. In order to overcome these obstacles the study recommended the identification of priority standards for strategic e-health systems and services.
