Healthcare goes electronic. With the growth-bis decree (law decree 179/2012, converted by law 221/2012), the electronic health record and the electronic disease certification take off. But the innovations also concern the establishment of cancer registries and the prescription of the drug's active ingredient. Let's see what it's about.
ELECTRONIC HEALTH FILE (ESF)
The ESF, set up by the regions, will be fed by all the subjects who take care of the patient within the National Health Service and the regional social-health services. Citizens can also ask to upload their own medical data. Consultation of the data and documents present in the ESF can only take place with the consent of the assisted person and always in compliance with professional secrecy. Of course, the rule of prior consent does not apply in cases of emergency and in any case the lack of consent does not affect the right to the provision of healthcare services.
For the management of the ESF, the growth decree recalls the general principles on privacy and therefore: proportionality, necessity and indispensability. The implementing measures and precautions will be defined as a decree of the Minister of Health, subject to the opinion of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data. The decree will establish the contents of the ESF, the data coding systems, the guarantees and security measures, the access authorizations. For the safety of the patient there is a unique identification code of the patient which will not allow the direct identification of the person concerned.
MORTALITY REGISTERS
The growth decree provides for the establishment of surveillance systems and registers of mortality, tumors and other pathologies, treatments consisting of cell and tissue transplants and treatments based on medicines for advanced therapies or tissue engineering products and prosthetic implants. They have the aim of prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation, health planning, verification of the quality of care. A special Dpcm is foreseen for the implementation. Also in this case, the privacy guarantor will have to be consulted to establish the subjects who can have access to the registers and the data they can know, and finally the measures for the custody and security of the data.
DIGITAL MEDICAL PRESCRIPTION
The countdown for the digital prescription begins. The regions must provide for the gradual replacement of prescriptions in paper format with the equivalent ones in electronic format. In 2013 the digital prescriptions will have to be 60% of the total, in 2014 the 80% and in 2015 the 90%. Furthermore, from 1 January 2014, I prescribe you
