Will 'kill' paper prescriptions

The above information was shared by Associate Professor, Dr. Luong Ngoc Khue - Director of the Department of Medical Examination and Treatment Management, Ministry of Health at the communication workshop on improving the quality of medical examination and treatment services recently held in Hanoi.

According to Mr. Khue, the country currently has nearly 50,000 medical examination and treatment facilities with two forms of paper prescription and electronic prescription. However, 95% of the software at public medical examination facilities is not uniform and not connected; 90% of private medical examination facilities do not have management software, still prescribe by hand or in medical records; 70% of drug stores have management software but do not sell drugs according to prescription.

Many handwritten prescriptions from doctors are so difficult that even pharmacists cannot "translate" them.

In addition, there are cases of handwritten prescriptions that are difficult to read or prescription abuse, including prescription of additional cosmetics, functional foods, etc.

Therefore, the Ministry of Health is determined to develop an electronic prescription project, connecting all prescriptions of all medical facilities across the country.

The project is currently being piloted in Hung Yen and Ha Tinh provinces. All prescriptions in these two provinces have been sent to the national electronic prescription system and to management levels; facilities also receive prescriptions via the electronic system and proceed to sell drugs according to the prescription.

After about 1 year of piloting, the Ministry of Health will simultaneously deploy the application in public and private medical examination and treatment facilities nationwide.

The Ministry of Health hopes that this project will overcome the situation of reselling prescription-only drugs, especially antibiotics and special controlled drugs, to avoid the rapidly increasing situation of antibiotic resistance in our country.

All information about the prescriber, patient name, and prescribing physician will be fully displayed on the national electronic prescription data.
National electronic prescription software will help people no longer need to use paper prescriptions or medical records like before.

"People can buy medicine anywhere in Vietnam as long as they have a prescription. Each prescription will have a unique code. People can also look up the doctor who prescribed it for them, from there they can make feedback or request a re-prescription and receive warnings about drugs that need to be re-prescribed, antibiotics, banned drugs, expired prescriptions, and need to be re-examined...", Mr. Khue shared.

All information about the prescriber, patient name, and prescribing physician will be fully displayed on the national electronic prescription database.

For the management agency, the national electronic prescription will be put into operation to track all prescription data of each province and each hospital, and can trace and verify each prescription to see which doctor prescribed it, when, and for what patient to determine whether the prescription is correct or not.

Electronic prescriptions will be connected to the national electronic health records and electronic medical records to create a closed cycle.