Bujar Osmani, the country's Minister of Health, attended the launch event at the Clinic for Paediatric Surgery in the capital Skopje. He said that the introduction of the solution constitutes a major step towards creating a fully electronic health system.
Through the application, Mr Osmani explained, a specialist doctor can obtain a patient's complete medical record electronically, with all the historical data covering previous tests and referrals from the family doctor.
He said: "This way of communication between patient and doctor opens up a new dimension in the relationship between health service users and the providers of the services, family doctors and specialists."
He said: "So fully electronic communication avoids the need for the patient to carry a bunch of papers to their doctor to show the status of their health from previous examinations. Electronic records will not constitute open documents by which anyone can see and know the condition of the patient, however, since the data will be protected and access will be given only to the doctor who is responsible for that patient." This, he stressed, is the future for every healthcare system in the world.
Minister Osmani explained that the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia "will be the first country in the region able to create a paperless, or fully electronic, health system, to the satisfaction of both patients and health workers."
He added that the installation of the application is complete at the primary level and all prerequisites for setting it up and putting it into operation had been satisfied.
Risto Simeonov, Director of the Clinic for Paediatric Surgery, said that the new application had been in operation for outpatients at the Clinic since April 2011: "Last month [April 2011] 466 patients with 508 Health Insurance Fund packages were processed through the system, and a further 262 patients with 321 packages were processed by 20 May."
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Quelle/Source: epractice, 23.06.2011
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