Rafał Piszczek, an Expert in the field of electronic medical documentation EDM Medfile^® gave comments on the most important solutions taking currently place in the Polish health care for the scientific journal “Gabinet Prywatny lekarza POZ”. It is commonly known that digitisation is inevitable. It would be essential to get yourself well-prepared for these changes to avoid any mistakes resulting from the rush.

Our observations show that medical offices often postpone the implementation of electronic medical records at the last minute, yet let us recall the most important dates for you:
- From January 1, 2019, the obligation to keep medical records in an electronic form was implemented, as referred to in regulations issued based on art. 13a of the Act on the information system in healthcare, i.e. in the regulation on the types of electronic medical records,
- January 1, 2020 – mandatory E-prescriptions
- January 1, 2021 – mandatory E-referrals

In the interview, our Expert raises the following issues:
- the advantages of data centralisation and the Value-Based Healthcare model,
- the effectiveness of E-referrals,
- the monitoring of therapies thanks to E-prescriptions,
- the benefits of using programs for electronic medical documentation, including process automation and telemedicine.

Hence, what are the main benefits of healthcare digitisation and will the qualitative effects of this transformation be measurable?
“Data centralisation. This guarantees its reliability. Polish health care is already heading towards the Value-Based Healthcare model, which is a model of qualitatively evaluated healthcare. It focuses the Patients and the benefits for their diagnostic and therapeutic process in the centre of attention. Everything that is currently happening is aimed at improving the quality of serving patients. The improvement of dataflow, central registers, better communication on the way between Doctor-Patient-NFZ[NHS]-Pharmacy. E-prescriptions and e-Referrals are solutions that not only increase the comfort of all institutions involved in the patient’s therapy but also provide many qualitative data, such as measuring the effectiveness of medicaments, specific treatment methods, etc. Observing the strategic plans and knowing what solutions are available on the Western markets in the scope of several years, the image of Polish health care will change radically. And that should please us all” – a fragment of the interview. The entire interview is available in the 3/2019 issue of the scientific journal “Gabinet Prywatny lekarza POZ”.

Rafał Piszczek –Statistician. Author of scientific-research publications and projects in data mining as part of statistical analyses and pharmaceutical industry. He specialises in the commercialisation of scientific knowledge for business practice and the transfer of scientific knowledge for business purposes. Expert in electronic medical documentation and telemedicine at Medfile^® EDM.