Kate McDonald
Pulse+IT, 25 January 2019
www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/blog/4760-finns-take-first-steps-towards-european-health-record
The movement toward digitising personal health records within the European Union has seen Finland and Estonia becoming the first two countries in the EU to allow digital prescriptions. These ePrescriptions will allow Finnish patients, who have been prescribed medicine electronically in Finland, to obtain their prescriptions from pharmacies in Estonia.
It is expected that EU’s eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure will allow twenty-two member states to ePrescribe, eDispense and exchange patient summaries by 2022. Currently, an exchange format for the Electronic Health Record is yet to be agreed upon.
In Australia, steps to digitise health data are being taken using My Health Record. My Health Record is designed to allow the Australian public to view and share with their healthcare professionals digital summaries of their health data.