Records and systems
Shared health record (SHR)
A shared health record (SHR) is a regional or national repository that holds a longitudinal, person centred record of clinical information contributed by many facilities, so authorised providers can see a patient's history wherever they present for care.
Why it matters
When a patient is referred from a health centre to a provincial hospital, the receiving clinician needs the history the referring facility holds. A shared health record makes that history available without a telephone call or a paper referral letter. In the OpenHIE architecture, the SHR is the component that holds a longitudinal record of a person's clinical information that can be made available across facilities [1].
Key points
- An SHR depends on a client registry, so that records from different facilities are linked to the same person [2].
- It sits within a health information exchange that handles routing, security and terminology services [3].
- FHIR R4 is a common way for facility systems to send and query SHR content.
- An SHR complements facility EHRs, which keep the full working detail of each encounter.
In Moana
Moana exchanges patient records using FHIR R4 and HL7 v2 and supports FHIR bulk export, so facility records can contribute to a national shared health record, as described on the interoperability page.
Sources
- OpenHIE Architecture Specification: shared health record, OpenHIE, accessed 2026
- OpenHIE client registry component specification, OpenHIE, 2024
- OpenHIE architecture specification: overview of the architecture, OpenHIE, 2024
Read the guide: Building a national health information system on routine care
In the platform: Interoperability
Related terms: Health information exchange, Master patient index, Open Health Information Exchange
Updated 2026-11-03. Written under Moana’s editorial standards.