Communication and retrieval of ECG data: how many standards do we need?

The increasing efforts to establish an electronic health record and new requirements of the FDA for provision of original ECG data with clinical studies has re-vitalized the interest and work on communication of ECG raw data and of processing results. Despite the fact that many companies from the United States and from Europe had developed and agreed on the ECG Standard Communications Protocol SCP it was not widely used. In new Projects, like the German IMEX, the European OpenECG and within an IEEE1073/HL7 working group the whole communication path, available and future standards, considering new requirements from telemedicine, have been discussed. This paper gives an overview on the present state and on some necessary final developments.