Standards play an important role in facilitating trade and sustainable development by promoting safety, quality and technical compatibility. Interoperability refers to the ability of different systems to exchange and understand information. For health information systems to share data, syntactic standards indicate what a piece of information is, while semantic standards indicate what it means. The WHO eHealth Standardization Coordination Group promotes coordination and identifies areas where further eHealth standardization is needed. Legal and ethical concerns in eHealth include privacy, security, consent and ensuring the integrity of exchanged health information.