Monday marked the first day of a gradual roll-out of the EU's ePrescription programme, enabling people who get digital prescriptions for medication from doctors in Finland to get them filled at participating pharmacies in Estonia.
According to Estonian public broadcaster ERR, the system will soon be reciprocal, reporting that digital prescriptions written out by Estonian physicians will be valid at participating Finnish apothecaries later this year.
The ePrescription initiative enables digital prescriptions to visible to pharmacists in participating countries, via the new eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure, without requiring customers to have them in writing.
Finland and Estonia are the first EU countries to put the ePrescription initiative into use.
More states joining, possibly this year
The European Commission's VP for the Digital Single Market, Andrus Ansip, offered his congratulations to the two countries, saying that he'd like to see other member states get involved in the programme, as well.
"People should be able to use their e-prescriptions across borders. Free movement is a founding principle of the EU: we must make it as easy as possible for people to get treatment or medicines when abroad in the EU. The next major step will be to simplify patient access to their very own health data, by developing a common format for exchanging electronic health records between EU countries," Ansip said in a press release issued by the commission on Monday.
Seven other EU states may also roll out these cross-border exchanges by the end of 2019, including the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Portugal, Croatia, Malta, Cyprus, Greece and Belgium, according to the commission.