Latvian Minister of Health Hosams Abu Meri hopes it will be possible to clarify plans for e-health system’s improvement by the end of the year.
The politician is not happy with the current system. He says e-health in its current form “is just e-prescriptions”. To review the system, the Ministry of Health has approximately EUR 36 million available from various EU funds to work with. It is also necessary to attract specialists to work in the Ministry of Health on this topic. Abu Meri hopes it will be possible to add clarity this issue and possible improvements by the end of the year.
The minister also promises to work on a single digital system
that would include all relevant patient information. “It is not normal when a person visits a doctor and is unable to access information about lab tests performed two months ago, requiring the doctor to request new tests,” said the minister, adding that this causes excessive workload for laboratories, longer queues and system overload.
Digitisation-related topics were laid in concept during the term of then the Minister of Health Daniels Pavļuts. Now this concept is on the table and is being reviewed to see if there are any improvements necessary, explains the politician.
Abu Meri believes Estonia and England have good systems to use as examples. “We just need to analyse [the information], we need a group of specialists to do it,” said the minister.
He stressed the need to review the list of compensated medicines, because the problem is that the medicines that are on that list are not very effective and there are numerous medicines that are not on that list at all. The minister hopes to bring in organisations to the discussion by the end of the year and reach clarity about this situation.
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