The Funen Health Care Network consists of the Odense University Hospital with 1.171 beds and the Hospitals of Funen, which include 7 hospitals with 665 beds in all. The number of General Practitioner's clinics is 183, and the number of specialist clinics is 78. The Funen Health Care Network is today one of the largest and most integrated health care network in Denmark. All 8 hospitals in Funen are connected to the net as well as 89% of The General Practitioners and 60% of the specialist clinics.

The Funen Health Care Network enables electronic communication between all clinical hospital departments, the general practitioners, specialists, radiology departments, biochemical laboratories, the clinical microbiology department and the pathology department. In average about 20.000 clinical messages are communicated electronically every day.

Electronic Patient Record has been used in daily practice for 10 years in the Hospitals of Funen and includes more than 550 clinical users. Electronic Patient Record will be implemented in all hospitals in the Funen Health Care Network within January 2006.

In 2002 the hospitals in the Funen County recorded 87.196 ECGs.

Daily use of the electronic patient record in the Hospitals of Funen has made it clear, that there is a great need to integrate different medical and technological systems. The cardiological ward in the Hospitals of Funen has made experience with electronic patient record and electrocardiograms and how to communicate these to other hospital units. The electrocardiograms are recorded digitally and stored on a central server. The electrocardiograms can be accessed directly via the electronic patient record, but the electrocardiograms cannot be used to exchange with other hospitals and partners in the health care sector, as the electrocardiograms are stored in a database using a proprietary format.

The County of Funen is now establishing an ECG project. A working group consisting of both clinicians and technicians has to describe and analyse how to implement a central ECG database for both Odense University Hospital and the Hospitals of Funen. To exchange the ECGs the database must support the SCP-ECG standard.

The project will, in a future stage, involve the practitioners, thus all ECGs from the General Practitioners will also be stored on the central ECG server. In that way all ECGs for the Funen citizens are available to everyone at the Funen Health Care Network. ECGs are supposed to be communicated in connection with referrals and discharge letters as well.