eHealthRecord is coming - the Law on Health Documentation adopted
Linking the archives of all health institutions into a single data system, establishing eHealthRecord and the Registry of Genetic and Biomedical Data are key innovations brought about by the new Law on Health Documentation and Records. According to NALED, which participated in the drafting of the Law, providing support to the Coordinating Body for Digitization in the Health System and the Ministry of Health, the new solutions will raise data protection to a higher level and enable doctors to use it more efficiently, and patients will be provided with better health care .
With the introduction of the eHealthRecord, for the first time, the history of diseases and treatment of citizens from health centers, hospitals, state and private practices will be unified in one place, and access to the eHealthRecord will be available to the selected doctor, specialist to whom the authorization will be transferred, emergency medical service, medical commission, or doctor to whom the patient gives access. This will speed up the journey through the health system, prevent repeat analyzes and returning to the general practitioner for new instructions, which will overall contribute to more effective treatment results.
All information systems in healthcare will be interconnected in the unique Republic Integrated Health Information System, RIZIS, which will contain information systems of RFZO, Batut, ALIMS and others that are planned to be established, in addition to eCarton.
- One of the key novelties is eHealthRecord, which allows your chosen doctor, without retyping huge documentation, to have insight into all aspects of treatment and can track which drugs have been prescribed for you, laboratory findings, discharge lists and specialist reports. At the same time, all patients will have access to their eCard and will no longer have to carry all the documentation from doctor to doctor. In addition, another very important innovation is the establishment of the Register of Genetic and Biomedical Data, which opens the door to the development of modern diagnostics, early detection of genetically determined diseases, the development of personalized medicine - said Jelena, program director of NALED and executive director of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Serbia. Bojović.
In Serbia, genetic analyzes are already carried out at 11 institutes. The establishment of the Registry, first of all, enables safe storage of this sensitive information in the State Data Center, and when combined with health data, it will have a much greater potential for improving diagnostics, prevention and treatment of patients suffering from many hereditary and rare diseases, development of personalized therapies and improvement of public health in general. Through this system, it will be possible to connect scientific-research institutes dealing with genetic analyzes and the health system, secure exchange of biomedical data, necessary for the interpretation of genetic analyses, and deliver the results of those tests to the patient's eHealthRecord with the necessary data protection or encryption.
The establishment of the Registry will guarantee the highest level of security and data protection, and the new Law on Health Documentation will regulate the issue of access and use for scientific and research purposes, with the aim of preventing unscrupulous, unethical access to information, and ensure the use of anonymized, aggregated and statistical data, which enable development of biomedical science and software that provide faster diagnostics, easier identification of rare diseases and conditions, contraindications or potential side effects.
Next year, the project of voluntary DNA screening, i.e. a type of pilot program for the development of personalized medicine, will begin in our country. By using advanced technologies in genetic analysis, the goal is to analyze the genetic characteristics of the subjects for the development of the most common diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases, certain rare diseases and genetic analysis of sensitivity to certain drugs, which can significantly improve the effectiveness of therapy.
The Law on Health Documentation and Health Records was adopted by the National Assembly, last week, at the proposal of the Ministry of Health, and the draft was prepared with the support of NALED, within the project "Serbia at your fingertips - Digital transformation for development" implemented by the United Nations Program Nations for Development (UNDP) and the Office for IT and eGovernment.
