The European Union Directive on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare(DIRECTIVE 2011/24/EU) stipulates in Article 11 the “Recognition of prescriptions issued in another Member State” for dispensation in any other Member State. It mandates the adoption of non-binding guidelines supporting Member States in developing the interoperability of ePrescriptions without prejudice to national rules.
In order to prepare such guidelines for Member States, the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC) of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Consumers (DG SANCO) issued a European-wide tender to draft such guidelines. A contract was awarded to empirica and its associates to prepare draft guidelines on interoperable ePrescriptions. Research on this cross-border ePrescription study was conducted in two steps:
- A comprehensive feasibility analysis phase, which gathered broad evidence on the status and processes of national ePrescription services in Member States where such systems exist or were under implementation. This also involed assembling experts across the Union to analyse this knowledge for its relevance to develop evidence-based guidelines indeed meeting the perceived needs of Member States.
- Theconcrete formulation of draft guidelines and their extensive validation.
- This work was complemented by a detailed socio-economic impact analysis of estimated implementation costs associated with guidelines translation into national initiatives.
As this was a study commissioned by the European Commission, reports are not in the public domain.
However, based on the “ePrescription draft guideline proposal” as prepared by empirica and submitted by the EC to the Member States for comment in early 2014, the eHealth Network of Member State representatives further developed and adopted these guidelines. They were published as “Guidelines on ePrescriptions Dataset for Electronic Exchange Under Cross-Border Directive 2011/24/EU. Release 1 “ 18 November 2014″. They are available here.