CONCEPT AND PRACTICE OF ELECTRONIC PRESCRIPTION

Abstract

The simple definition of Electronic prescription (EP) can be met by different approaches as encoding the whole data of a prescription to a QR-code or a memory card. Also, the data can be sent directly to a particular pharmacy. Still, a unified national system with central storage is the only way how to guarantee wide benefits – not only the basic ones but also the advanced such as exploiting the gathered data and using automated clinical decision support. The Czech Republic at present features a widely used national EP system for its development state-of- -the art method of process modeling has been used. Most other EU countries are endowed with a similar system, although few exceptions (e.g., Germany with only a pilot phase) exist. Also, the interoperability of EP in the EU is still not widely developed with only four countries with this feature.