Discovering the ROR, a single database centralizing the healthcare information in France

The Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS) and the Direction Génerale de l'Offre de Soins (DGOS) had the great pleasure of meeting with the Swedish eHealth Agency for a presentation of the ROR (Operational Directory of Resources).

ROR logo

The Swedish eHealth Agency is a government agency that works to digitalise and improve the sharing of information between patients, the healthcare system, and pharmacies in Sweden. It offers a number of e-health services and digital solutions for individuals as well as staff working in healthcare and social services.

The Swedish eHealth Agency coordinates the government's e-health initiatives and monitors developments in the e-health field, both nationally and internationally. It is also responsible for registers and IT services used by individuals, healthcare providers and pharmacies.

What is the Operational Directory of Resources (ROR) ?

The Operational Directory of Resources (ROR) is a data repository which centralises the description of the care offer in health facilities, in care services for the elderly losing their autonomy or disabled patients, as well as office-based practice. For each healthcare facility, it specifies the types of units in a hospital, specific hospital equipment, operational activities, bed capacity and availability, etc.

ROR Picture

The information centralised in the ROR improves the patient pathway by feeding more than 31 digital applications with healthcare information. This data provides patients and healthcare professionals with numerous services such as:

  • Finding a nursing home for an elderly person with loss of autonomy;
  • Looking for a paediatric psychologist in the neighbourhood;
  • Follow up of the bed availabilities in the different care units.

The regional databases: aging solutions that need to be redesigned

There are currently 2 software solutions for managing the operational directory of resources: the ROR IeSS solution and the ROR IR solution. Every of the 18 region uses and deploys the software solution of its choice.

The regional coordinators and ROR “referents” in the healthcare facilities complete their regional ROR with the healthcare information. Every digital service that uses the information of the ROR needs to connect to the 18 regional ROR databases in order to have a national overview of the healthcare information.

The target vision of the ROR database: a national solution with a single point of access

The national ROR solution is the evolution of the ROR architecture from an information system based on 18 regional databases to a single national database that gathers in a single point of access the healthcare information and feeds all the digital services needing this information to improve the patient care.

A 5-year trajectory with several stages has been defined to ensure the construction of the national ROR and the progressive centralization of flows with a first step in 2023.