Research note: A European ehealth space for moving cross-border eprescription and patient summary services forward

The purpose of the paper is to present a framework for moving cross-border ePrescription (eP) and Patient Summary (PS) services forward, bearing in mind the needs and requirements of the European e-health space for cross-border eP and PS services, the limitations of the already developed solutions, as well as outcomes available from other domains.

The outcomes of previous and current large-scale pilot projects, aiming toward the delivery of electronic cross-border services, are examined. Integration of generic building blocks (BBs) is considered for the further development of cross-border eP and PS, in line with the European Directive on patients’ rights in cross-border health care.

The e-health domain is expected to greatly benefit from mitigating non-domain concerns such as those for electronic identification, end point detection, non-repudiation and the use of electronic signatures and trust establishments for basic cross-border public services in Europe.

Research limitations are related to the fact that electronic identification, electronic signature and semantic issues have not been fully addressed yet at a European level to support cross-border services.

Practical implications are related to the cooperation, European level compatibility and sustainability of the underlying national infrastructures required to support reliable and secure exchange of medical data, as well as the readiness to address continuously evolving interoperability, legal and security requirements in a cross-border setting.

The need for consolidating the existing outcomes of non-health specific BBs is examined for two high-priority e-health services. Ongoing progress is presented, together with related issues that need to be resolved for improving technical certainty and making it easier to use health-care services abroad in cases of emergency.