Bulgaria pilots electronic health cards

30 January 2007

Sofia, Bulgaria. The Bulgarian National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) is carrying out a pilot project for electronic health cards. Three general practitioners, five pharmacies, and 1,000 patients will be included in the project, which will be implemented by international ehealth specialist ICW and network solution provider Cisco.

The pilot project will take place in a small municipality. Participating physicians and patients will identify themselves with their cards at any consultation. The system then automatically establishes a secure online connection to verify the current insurance status of the patient and his presence in the patient list of the physician. This reduces administrative work for the physician and effectively prevents the possible fraudulent use of lost or stolen eCards.

With the new system, physicians are also able to issue digitally signed electronic prescriptions that are stored on the card and on a prescription server. Thus, illegible prescriptions are a thing of the past and pharmaceutical drug safety is increased. The electronic prescription also forms the basis for a future automatic drug interaction and contraindication check that will ensure that only medications that are compatible with the patient’s other drugs and diseases will be dispensed.

The system has already successfully completed extensive pilot tests in Germany. It enables the secure exchange of medical data according to internationally accepted standards. It will provide the basis for the development of modern healthcare services for Bulgarian citizens, eg electronic personal health records that contain all relevant medical data of a person.

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