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Over 25 million electronic examinations have been registered by general practitioners and specialists in outpatient and hospital medical care, through the National Health Information System (NHIS). This has come in less than a year since the e-examination module has been launched by Information Services. Some 170,000 examinations are being registered daily in electronic format by nearly 7,200 medical practices. In total over 17,000 doctors from hospital and outpatient medical care work with the system. NHIS enables complete digitalization and storage of all performed medical examinations. With the digitalization of the process, all patients have complete traceability of diseases, diagnoses, assigned therapies, examinations, etc.
The majority of registered electronic examinations includes only those reimbursed by the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF). In the coming months, an ordinance related to the activities of the NHIS is expected to be drafted and approved. After its entry into force, doctors are expected to register all examinations in the system, regardless of the source of funding.
"Data shows that NHIS processes nearly 3 million electronic requests per day, which makes the platform one of the most frequently used in our country," the Information Services' CEO Ivaylo Filipov said. According to him, it significantly improves the quality of healthcare services in Bulgaria. On average, NHIS issues nearly 600,000 national reference numbers (NRN) per day. NRN is issued for each individual electronic document in the system.
The e-prescribing module also reports impressive results. In two years, the centralized online system for prescribing and dispensing medicinal products has registered over 25.7 million e-prescriptions, and nearly 24 million of them have already been fulfilled. Over 3,000 pharmacies across the country are successfully connected to the system, and over 4,000 pharmacists are successfully fulfilling patients' electronically prescribed medications. On average, more than 60,000 electronic prescriptions are fulfilled per day.
Nearly 15 million electronic referrals have been issued through the health information system. More than half of them are referrals for laboratory procedures, and over 5 million are referrals for consultation. NHIS has registered over 1.1 million e-referrals for hospitalization, nearly 530,000 for highly specialized activities and over 280,000 electronic documents for medical expertise.
The completed electronic hospitalizations in hospitals are approaching 1 million. The module for electronic processing of admitted patients was officially launched on August 1, 2022, in accordance with the National Framework Agreement. It allows medical institutions to submit electronically the performed activities of hospitalization, de-hospitalization, laboratory procedures, consultations, issuing epicrisis, etc. On average, 6,000 electronic hospitalizations are registered daily by 351 hospitals in the country.
"The projects of Information Services in the health sector marked the beginning of the long-awaited electronic health care in Bulgaria," said Ivaylo Filipov. For the past few years, the company has developed key projects such as National COVID-19 Integrated Information System, National Information Portal for COVID-19, the issuance of EU Digital COVID Certificates, the electronic register of those willing to be vaccinated, the register of vaccinated persons, a mobile application for scanning COVID certificates, the information system for the control of medical expertise, a system for electronic prescription books, etc.