French health record live by December

The delayed French electronic health record, Dossier Medical Personnel (DM-Personnel), will be launched by the end of the year, the agency responsible for the programme has said.

The EHR will allow patients to organise their health records for consultations with their GP and other healthcare providers and give them access to medication histories and a summary of recent appointments.

The second part of the programme, the Dossier Medical Patient (DM-Patient), will be developed over the next few years to allow medical records to be shared among healthcare professionals. 

The idea is to provide them with in-depth information about a patient’s care including medical images, exam results and lab reports.

The announcement follows the re-launch of the DMP by health and sport’s minister Roselyn Bachelot last year. The project was scrapped in 2008 by a joint commission of three government ministries.

Since then, ASIP Santé, the shared healthcare information systems agency, has selected Santeos SA, an affiliate of ATOS Origin, Extelia, an affiliate of La Poste (the national post service) and Softway Medical to produce the first version of the DMP.

It has also published specifications for software developers building components of the DM Personnel and established a framework for system interoperability which will also apply to DM Patient.

The programme will pull together several years of ongoing pilot programmes, the development of security systems and existing medical records.

ASIP Santé has said that they will create a network of health professionals to assist patients in setting up their records and will also allow patients to opt out.

The records are expected to create cost savings of more than €3.5 billion annually for the state insurance fund.

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ASIP Santé