The preservation of digital documents in the Italian healthcare context. Survey on the state of implementation and critical issues

Abstract

The realization of digital preservation in compliance with legislation is extremely important, especially in a sensitive domain like healthcare, where guaranteeing document reliability, authenticity, integrity and readability over time is essential to have an immediate return in terms of efficiency of the whole care setting. In this perspective, the present paper highlights critical issues, through detailed surveys addressed to both national health facilites and digital preservers, defining the state of the art of digital preservation practices in the Italian healthcare setting. The final aim is to identify the strategic areas that need technical and regulatory interventions, in order to offer a major boost of innovation to the domain. Results show an extremely variegated context that is not always compliant to the articulated legislation. These results will be used to integrate the new Italian Guidelines on the creation, management and preservation of digital documents published by the Agency of Digital Italy.