Alpo Värri
CEN/TC251 Health Informatics is a standards delivery organisation, meaning that it approves standards in Europe, but the standards do not have to be created in Europe. In fact, many of them come from the global health informatics committee ISO/TC215. For this reason, it is important to monitor and contribute to the standards prepared in ISO/TC215. This is what the purpose of this fellowship was about.
ISO/TC215 has around 10 working groups (WGs) and CEN/TC251 has two. I am the convener of the second one and I try to follow those ISO/TC215 WGs that operate within the scope of my WG in CEN/TC251. This is not always easy because the ISO/TC215 WG meetings take place at the same time. In ISO/TC215 I participate mainly in interoperability, information security, and health software development areas.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming to healthcare, too. As I have AI experience through my doctoral studies and projects that followed, it has been natural for me to follow AI standardisation, too. The ISO/TC215 meeting in Toronto in October 2025 made it clear that the number of AI related work items is increasing in ISO/TC215. ISO/TC215 has a joint working group 3 (JWG3) with JTC1/SC42 Artificial Intelligence. The idea is that the ISO/TC215 AI work items are developed in this JWG3. Attendance in JWG3 is important also because I am a member of the CEN Strategic Advisory Group on AI in healthcare.
During the ISO/TC215 Toronto meetings in October 2025, SC42 held its meetings in Sydney, Australia. After the working day was over in Toronto, work began in Sydney in Toronto evening time. I participated in particularly the healthcare AI standards development JWG3 and SC42/WG4 Use Cases meetings virtually in Sydney. Attendance in JWG3 meetings was important to motivate the ISO/TC215 initiated standardisation projects to the SC42 leadership. Through my participation, the other parties became more aware of European values in AI standardisation.