This paper summarises the current status of work to develop a European Standard message for communication information from Electronic Health Care Records. This is part of the current work programme of the Technical Committee of the European Standardization Committee concerned with Health Informatics. This Standardization process is aimed at providing a general solution to the requirements for electronic communication between a diversity of clinical information systems. However, the two priority areas chosen for initial validation are Primary Care and Diabetes Care. The second of these areas is being addressed in close liaison with a messaging sub-group of the Diabetes Optimization through Information Technology study group of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. Good early progress has been made and the timetable for completion of this work is short. The project team hopes to complete their work by the end of 1998 and formal adoption as a European Standard is scheduled for mid 1999. At this stage suppliers of clinical information systems will be able to implement Standard messages to support the communication of Electronic Health Care Record information. Once the Standard has been widely implemented, diabetologists, general practitioners, other specialists and health professionals from other disciplines should be able to exchange clinical information in a safe and useful manner.