Uruguay takes leaps and bounds towards the complete operation of a Digital Health system, which plans to operate with 100% of the medical records in digital format by 2020. In this initial stage, 14 health providers with more than 50,000 users achieved to conduct a test day to verify the operation of the interoperability of the medical records of their members.
The National Electronic Medical Record (HCEN) is a reality that is happening in Uruguay. The South American country has turned its efforts to start a movement that allows citizens to have their information connected in Health Institutions in order to be able to access their digitally shared history.
The technical and strategic validation of the fourth stage of the plan for the adoption of the National Electronic Medical Recordwas carried out on Tuesday, June 26 this year and the informatic and management teams of the Institutions that make up the Health System participated.
The Minister of Public Health, Jorge Basso, said in an interview that, in this new stage, which formally began on Wednesday, June 27, the health teams of these service providers will be able to access the patient's clinical information in a timely manner, secure and online, regardless of the geographical location and the Institution where the information was generated, for this, each patient will needs to enable their history.
The owner of the information is the user, and the data that is exchanged under the interoperability scheme is sensitive, so it must be treated with the highest international standards of information security to maintain confidentiality. Under these rules, the user decides the moment and with whom their information is shared.
In the first stage of the process to start the execution of the plan, 14 health service providers were connected through an interoperability scheme, and the early incorporation of the additional 29 is planned. This would connect the 43 existing and serving providers in the country.
If you think of cases in which an institution requires the clinical history of a patient that isn’t their user, interoperability between digital platforms is essential to ensure the adequate provision of services for the benefit of the medical care that the person should receive.
It should be noted that Uruguay is part of D9, a group to which the nine countries in the world that have the most developed digital government belong.
