Use of cross-border e-prescriptions was promoted in the workshop of the digitalisation project
World’s Smoothest Cross-border Mobility and Daily Life Through Digitalisation project organised a workshop to promote its main themes, of which one is the use of cross-border e-prescriptions and electronic patient summaries between the Nordic and Baltic countries. The project is financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
Representatives of the countries participating in the project, in other words Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were gathered in October 2022 to find out, how the project, directed by the Population Data Services Agency of Finland, is progressing.
THL is in charge of the work package related to healthcare services, especially to e-prescriptions and electronic patient summaries.
As the mobility of EU citizens between the member states is increasing, it is important to ensure that citizens continue to receive care and safe medical treatment also when travelling within the Nordic and Baltic countries.
It was emphasized in the workshop that much of the work to implement cross-border e-prescriptions and electronic patient summaries is already being done in other projects, for instance at EU level. Therefore, the most central task of the work package is to provide opportunities to share knowledge of best cross-border implementation practices and key elements of electronic health information exchange.
“The participants stressed that it is important to form a common Nordic voice and to find out more about the daily mobility around the so-called hot spots”, says Minna Sinkkonen who works as a Development Manager at THL and is in charge of the work package related to healthcare services.
Barriers to be tackled by the Handbook of Cross-border Data Exchange
There are many kinds of barriers to be tackled before cross-border data exchange works smoothly. One of the challenges is that the digitalisation progress in general is slow and even minor changes take time and resources.
There are also various technical barriers: the systems vary from country to country, and even inside of the countries. Furthermore, different countries collect health care data in different ways.
”The main goal of the project is to create a Handbook of Cross-border Data Exchange between the Nordic and Baltic countries to help to deal with the problems”, explains Minna Sinkkonen.
The handbook gathers information of models and practices and a framework for cross-border cooperation on data exchange. It will consist of different ways to tackle for instance legal, semantic, and technical interoperability barriers that are slowing down or inhibiting cross-border data exchange.
The handbook will serve as a model or a framework to follow, when encountering a need to exchange new type of data across border or when a challenge appears when data is exchanged.
Further information
Project page (Ministry of Finance)
Baseline study of cross-border data exchange in the Nordic and Baltic countries
Minna Sinkkonen
Development Manager
THL
+358 29 524 7032
[email protected]
