Smart Open Services for European Patients

Liuska Sanna, EPF Senior programme Manager, attended the epSOS project workshop on 27-28 June 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal. The scope was to exchange ideas about how to intensify the promotion and use of epSOS services to make it operational. epSOS (2008-2013) designed a service infrastructure that demonstrates cross-border interoperability between electronic health record systems in Europe. Patients may benefit from this project’s outcomes as it provides two services in favour of cross-border healthcare: the epSOS ‘Patients summary’ and the epSOS ‘ePrescriptions’.

The epSOS ‘Patient Summary’ is a standardised set of basic medical data that includes the most important clinical facts required to ensure safe and secure healthcare. This short version gives health professionals the essential information they need to provide care in the case of an unexpected or unscheduled medical situation (e.g. emergency or accident).

The epSOS ePrescriptions  contain the currently available ePrescriptions for the medications, i.e. all prescriptions that could also be dispensed in the patient’s home country at that moment. However with epSOS they are electronically transmitted to pharmacies in epSOS partner countries. It means that if a prescribed medical product is not available abroad, the participating pharmacist may, depending on the circumstances, dispense a different brand or package size of a comparable product to the patient.

For more information, please visit www.epsos.eu or contact Liuska Sanna, EPF Programme Manager, at liuska.sanna@eu-patient.eu.