ELGA's first milestone has already been reached with the launch of the 'Gesundheit' public health portal. "In its final form, the health portal will be every Austrian's door to his or her personal EPR", said Dr. Susanne Herbek, the Managing Director of ELGA-GmbH. For the time being, the online portal focuses on the provision of quality-assured and independent health information, such as a medical encyclopaedia or information on patient rights and laboratory procedures.
ELGA is a searchable database that contains all health data about a patient, no matter when and where they were collected. The data can be accessed anytime by everybody who has the necessary access privileges. "A reliable system of strict access privileges is a crucial issue", said Dr Susanne Herbek. "Privacy and patient autonomy have to be guarded under all circumstances." she added.
Patients can opt out, i.e. deny ELGA access to either their complete set of health data or to selected information. They can also call up the logs where every access - when, where, by whom - is recorded. These logs have been particularly designed to prevent abuse. In this regard, Dr Clemens Martin Auer, a senior official in charge of ELGA at the Austrian Ministry of Health assured that any possible abuse of the data in the EPRs will be subject to criminal prosecution.
The first ELGA application to be implemented is eMedikation, i.e. electronic prescriptions. Data on prescribed and dispensed medication will be stored and can be accessed from hospitals and doctor's offices. eMedikation will cover both prescription and over-the-counter drugs if they contain active ingredients that might interact with other pharmaceuticals. Automatic checks of prescriptions and fillings in the pharmacies are designed to detect and prevent interactions and multiple prescriptions. However, there is no time frame yet for the introduction of eMedikation.
Much easier was the definition of harmonised technical standards - a precondition for any ELGA application. All information systems have to be Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)-compatible, which means they must comply with the interoperability guidelines of the IHE initiative. Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) was selected as the document standard.
However, a project such as ELGA is not universally accepted. Privacy is a major concern and consumer-protection organisations and office-based physicians have voiced their protests clearly. They fear repercussions for patients on the labour market when prospective employers can access a candidate's ELGA data or for patients whose record shows poor compliance. "As soon as such data are available, there are immediately many parties who want to access them for whatever reason. In view of a whole slew of scandals involving the unauthorised use of data and privacy infringements throughout Europe, we strongly advise against such data pools", Dr Christian Euler, president of the Austrian association of General Practitioners (GPs), has warned.
"We do take the fears and concerns seriously and try to find a solution", emphasised Ms. Susanne Herbek. "But personally I consider the concern that ELGA will be turned into a system of control entirely unfounded", she added.
"Source: This text is based on an article by Michael Krassnitzer, first published in EUROPEAN HOSPITAL issue 2/2010".
Further information:
- Original News Item - European Hospital < li>Electronic Health Records (ELGA) (in German)
- Gesundheit Health Portal (in German)
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Quelle/Source: epractice, 03.06.2010
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