The national e-medication approaches in Germany, Switzerland and Austria: A structured comparison

• Austria, Germany and Switzerland are all establishing national eHealth infrastructures to support the availability of patient-related medication information (“e-Medikation”) on a national scale.
• While all three countries formulate comparable goals for their eHealth solutions, the chosen architectures, standards and functionalities turn out very differently due to different national context.
• The paper shows how the goal of a comprehensive national medication list can be addressed via quite different eHealth infrastructures and architectures.

BackgroundRecent studies show that many patients are harmed due to missing or erroneous information on prescribed and taken medication. Many countries are thus introducing eHealth solutions to improve the availability of this medication information on a national scale (often called “e-medication”). The objective of this study is to analyse and compare the national e-medication solutions just being introduced in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.MethodsInformation on the situation in the three countries was collected within an expert group and complemented by an analysis of recent literature and legislation in each country.ResultsAll three countries formulate comparable goals for the national eHealth solutions, focusing on improving medication safety. All three countries do not have a national e-prescription system. In all three countries, the implementation process was slower than expected and e-medication is not yet fully available. Differences of the three countries exist regarding chosen architectures, used standards, offered functionalities, and degree of voluntariness of participation.ConclusionNationwide e-medication systems and cross-border harmonization are acknowledged as important goals towards medication safety, but they develop slowly mainly due to privacy and security requirements, the need for law amendments and last but not least political interests.