Family doctors in Romania are supporting the use of the electronic health file, but complain about the lack of legislation to create, use and keep such files.

The electronic health file should have become mandatory on June 1 this year, but was delayed, with no fixed due date. The local law should include information about what sort of medical data the electronic file should store, what terminology to use, coding systems, what is allowed to transfer abroad and what not, and rules for the company which runs the servers and which has ownership of data in the electronic files.

Doctors say the law should also establish how patients give their consent to stocking their personal data, for how long they can be archived, as well as how the various new informatics systems will connect to each other. They also ask for standard software solutions for all involved in the system – doctors, hospitals, labs, pharmacies.

So far, 5,800 doctors have uploaded data in electronic health files, and 4,000 patients studied their medical history.

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editor@romania-insider.com