Iran’s conventional healthcare system should become fully electronic in six months.
During a press conference in Tehran last week, President Hassan Rouhani referred to the move as another push toward realizing an electronic government.
Rouhani announced that as per the plan, Electronic Health Record should become operational and all paper insurance booklets should be replaced with digital cards by then, President.ir reported.
EHR is a joint project implemented by ICT Ministry and Iran's Social Security Organization aimed at digitizing health services. It is a real-time, patient-oriented digital record that makes information available instantly and securely to authorized users.
Acknowledging the endeavors of Health Ministry and SSO for finalizing the plan, Rouhani said the project’s infrastructures for setting up an electronic database and digital prescription system should soon become operational.
“All the citizens covered by health insurance services should be able to use the new electronic system soon,” he said.
Health Minister Saeed Namaki had earlier said that only a few security glitches in the system need to be removed before Iran’s EHR could become operational.
EHR is a joint project implemented by the ICT Ministry and Iran's Social Security Organization aimed at digitizing health services
“The project is almost complete and will become operational as soon as security concerns are addressed. When it comes on stream, people can access their personal EHR through a smartphone application or a website using their national ID number,” he said.
EHR is based on a digital health database recently unveiled by SSO.
Hamidreza Safikhani, an official with Health Ministry, says EHR will include the health history of around 70 million people.
"The database will enable doctors to better understand the patients’ condition and history," he said.
Currently, for visiting a doctor, people with subscriptions can use the organization’s services by providing their national ID number. Doctors check the number on the database online.
In recent years, SSO has been upgrading the database to make it more efficient.
In addition to the database, doctors can use digital health cards, also developed by the organization, instead of paper insurance books to prescribe medicines. Instead of issuing written notes, the doctor will type the prescription on SSO’s site and the patient can receive medicines from any pharmacy having a contract with the organization, which means most major pharmacies.
Each individual’s health history will be uploaded on smart electronic cards. Doctors using specialized devices for reading the data stored on the card can access the patient’s health history without relying on the internet.
Digital Prescription
The other measure complementing EHR is the use of digital signatures by physicians and electronic prescriptions for the patients.
Experts believe that the use of digital signature will also cut fraudulent actions and prevent the misuse of online prescriptions, along with the speedy processing and delivery of medicine in drugstores.
A digital signature identifies the signatory and authenticates the digital message or document with a digital code.
Technical requirements for the implementation of digital signature and electronic prescription have been met and the scheme was run as a pilot for volunteer physicians and drugstores.
Physicians willing to digitize their services can visit Iran Medical Council's website, Irimc.org, and apply for a digital signature. To do so, they are required to enter their national ID and medical identification code in the application form.
Reportedly, the project is currently operational at SSO's medical centers in several provinces.
According to Safikhani, in the past three years, over 140 million digital prescriptions have been issued by physicians at the medical centers.
"The technical infrastructures of digital prescription will be further developed and finalized for widespread use by eight universities inside the country," he said.
In addition, knowledge-based companies active in the field of healthcare have also been invited for collaboration.
The Iranian government has focused on digitizing the country’s old data infrastructure with schemes to push both public and private providers to simplify several tasks, including the purchase of insurance.
Until now, Iran’s insurance companies had struggled to draw concise figures on specific medical complaints in the country. But under the new system, large amounts of data will be instantly available to both insurers and government bodies.
However, the push to overhaul the system could mean higher premiums for customers in the next few years, as the biggest health insurer could charge considerably more per policy, depending on the insured person’s medical conditions.
