The Electronic Health Record is available: here’s what’s new
Citizens will be able to consult their medical reports online, book services, pay tickets and choose or revoke their family doctor
ROME – By the end of 2024, Italian citizens, through the Pago PA platform or App IO, will be able to consult their medical reports online, book services, pay tickets and choose or revoke their family doctor. The Electronic Health Record 2.0 is taking hold, presented yesterday in Rome during a press conference by the Undersecretary for Innovation, Alessio Butti, and the Undersecretary for Health, Marcello Gemmato. The event, which took place in the Multifunctional Hall of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, was also an opportunity to present the ESF 2.0 logo and describe the evolution of the project from the end of 2022 to today but also to talk about future developments .
The File, meanwhile, promises a change of pace thanks to a ‘metamorphosis’ of the data, which – as they explained – will no longer be just administrative but above all clinical, allowing any doctor to access the personal history of each patient. Italy, thus, will be among the first countries in Europe to equip itself with a ‘container’ available and accessible to every citizen throughout the Italian territory.
“We are the only country where the data of 60 million citizens will be preserved in an ecosystem of health data – they said during the presentation – After twenty years of health planning, a unique health information system in the world is being built and is part of the PNRR project, which includes various investments. aimed at the digital transformation of healthcare”.
In the context of IT transformation for the reduction of waiting lists and for a new efficiency of the National Health Service, the Electronic Health Record 2.0 project is therefore central and, together with telemedicine, hyper-connected healthcare, the registry healthcare, the move to the cloud by healthcare companies, the electronic medical records of family doctors and specialists, and hospital information systems, constitutes a “major digital investment, which is strengthened and completed with the EDS (Health Data Ecosystem) , which brings together and reworks from a technological point of view all the data collected by the regions, valorising the work done by the different territories in recent years”. Completion of the EDS is scheduled for 2025.
INFORMATION SHARING BETWEEN HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS
The Electronic Health Record therefore allows for “more efficient coordination of care, thanks to the sharing of information between different healthcare professionals, reducing the risk of duplication of tests and unnecessary prescriptions”. In particular, in the management of emergencies, doctors can quickly access crucial patient information (such as allergies, medications in use, medical history), improving the timeliness and effectiveness of the intervention. Patients can easily access their health records via the internet, consulting their medical data, prescriptions and reports at any time. “Two tools have been created – they explained again during the conference – that is, a dashboard to share data with the regions and a public dashboard to share data with all citizens on the progress of the works, but even before that on the services that the FSE offers access opportunities”. The monitoring dashboard for the regions is “already active starting from the month of May, while it is accessible to everyone starting from 12 June 2024″. In the case of health mobility between regions, patients who move across the national territory can maintain continuity of care, since their health information is “easily accessible everywhere through the ESF”.