Peppol started life as a European EDI standards initiative, and has rapidly been adopted by organisations across the public sector throughout the EU. In the UK, the Department of Health adopted Peppol and GS1 standards as a way to increase data standardisation and reduce cost and complexity throughout the healthcare supply chain in England.

There are two key points of Peppol

• Every organisation, whether a supplier or a customer, will conform to a single set of standards, so that everyone who is Peppol compliant can exchange documents with everyone else who is Peppol compliant.
• Every organisation can choose the Peppol service provider who best meets their needs, as all Peppol service providers can committed to exchanging documents in the standard way. This is called the 4-point model.

Unlike the situation with the fragmented electronic document exchange standards previously used by suppliers and customers, Peppol means that there is no need to set up a new point-to-point connection in order to exchange documents with a new partner. A single set of document exchange links between the Peppol network and your own computer system allows you to connect to every other Peppol-ready partner.

This will, eventually, significantly reduce the cost of achieving electronic integration between all parties.

While progress towards the goal of complete Peppol adoption in the UK healthcare sector has been slow, a significant number of document exchanges now take place over Peppol. Almost all suppliers have implemented a Peppol capability, in one form or another. The crucial next step is to get to the point where suppliers can connect not just to a handful of customers, the healthcare providers, but all of them.

To achieve that, not only do all healthcare providers have to implement Peppol capability, but also suppliers (and their chosen Peppol service providers) have to know who is ready. This website attempts to help with the second point.

Brexit and the future of Peppol

Peppol is no longer solely a European initiative, but is rapidly becoming a global standard.

Peppol is not just a healthcare sector standard, but a goal for the entire public sector.

Peppol is not the only standard in use for document exchange outside of the EU. However Peppol uses the very latest internet protocol, AS4, to ensure privacy and security, and makes use of the latest internationally agreed standards, to ensure compatibility.

Regardless of changes in the UK marketplace resulting from Brexit, the adoption of Peppol is expected to grow significantly, in the UK and elsewhere. Despite slow adoption by UK trusts, the number of exchanges using Peppol is growing, and it seems almost inevitable that within the foreseeable future this will reach the tipping point so that every healthcare organisation, both suppliers and healthcare providers - and many other entities - will become Peppol connected.