Traditional Prescription Goes Digital in Veneto Region, Italy

From today, in Veneto Region the traditional prescription will make room for the digital one. The prescription drug will no longer be delivered to patients by general practitioners on the traditional "red prescription", but through a memo printed on white paper. With this reminder citizens will, as usual, go to the pharmacy and pick up the prescribed medication. A minor change to the user that implies a great evolution for health services of Veneto. Indeed, the infrastructure needed to implement the regional Electronic Health Record, essential tool to both regional and national health care system for the improvement of services to citizens, has been created thanks to the dematerialisation of pharmaceutical prescriptions. To achieve the objective the process of dematerialisation of production and delivery of prescriptions has been completed thanks to the telecommunication network that connects physicians, Local Health Authorities, pharmacies, Region and the Ministry of Economy. This goal was achieved by Veneto Region in collaboration with all the regional Local Health Authorities and the support of Arsenàl.IT, Veneto's Research Centre for eHealth Innovation, that has as its members the LHAs and hospital trusts of the Region and coordinates the initiative within the project regional Electronic Health Record.

The system is ready for the green light on September 1. As of today in fact, 98% of GPs and paediatricians who work in the Region send already digital prescriptions, while 97% of the regional pharmacies are capable of delivering drugs according to the new mode.

However it should be pointed out that, in order to enable the continuity of service, it is still possible for physicians to use the traditional prescription during home medical examinations and in some exceptional cases, while a specific series of drugs is excluded from the digital prescription process at the moment.

It is important to underline that the transition to digital prescriptions allows significant savings to the health system. Arsenàl.IT has calculated that due to the dematerialization of pharmaceutical prescription (about 40 millions per year) Veneto will save € 3,244,901 per year.

Citizens will be informed of the change through a communication campaign titled "Cambia il colore, aumenta il valore" (The colour changes, the value increases) that provides for the distribution of information materials in the offices of general practitioners and pharmacies.

About Arsenàl.IT, Veneto's Research Centre for eHealth Innovation
Veneto's Research Centre for eHealth Innovation, Arsenàl.IT aims at enhancing the clinical processes and the assistance offered to citizens by means of a collaboration among associated members, an optimization of involved resources, a reduction of costs and a facilitation of the change management.

Most Popular Now

Researchers Invent AI Model to Design Ne…

Researchers at McMaster University and Stanford University have invented a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) model which can design billions of new antibiotic molecules that are inexpensive and easy to...

Alcidion and Novari Health Forge Strateg…

Alcidion Group Limited, a leading provider of FHIR-native patient flow solutions for healthcare, and Novari Health, a market leader in waitlist management and referral management technologies, have joined forces to...

Greater Manchester Reaches New Milestone…

Radiologists and radiographers at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust have become the first in Greater Manchester to use the Sectra picture archiving and communication system (PACS) to report on...

Powerful New AI can Predict People'…

A powerful new tool in artificial intelligence is able to predict whether someone is willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The predictive system uses a small set of data from demographics...

ChatGPT can Produce Medical Record Notes…

The AI model ChatGPT can write administrative medical notes up to ten times faster than doctors without compromising quality. This is according to a new study conducted by researchers at...

Can Language Models Read the Genome? Thi…

The same class of artificial intelligence that made headlines coding software and passing the bar exam has learned to read a different kind of text - the genetic code. That code...

Advancing Drug Discovery with AI: Introd…

A transformative study published in Health Data Science, a Science Partner Journal, introduces a groundbreaking end-to-end deep learning framework, known as Knowledge-Empowered Drug Discovery (KEDD), aimed at revolutionizing the field...

Study Shows Human Medical Professionals …

When looking for medical information, people can use web search engines or large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT-4 or Google Bard. However, these artificial intelligence (AI) tools have their limitations...

Wanted: Young Talents. DMEA Sparks Bring…

9 - 11 April 2024, Berlin, Germany. The digital health industry urgently needs skilled workers, which is why DMEA sparks focuses on careers, jobs and supporting young people. Against the backdrop of...

Shared Digital NHS Prescribing Record co…

Implementing a single shared digital prescribing record across the NHS in England could avoid nearly 1 million drug errors every year, stopping up to 16,000 fewer patients from being harmed...

Bayer and Google Cloud to Accelerate Dev…

Bayer and Google Cloud announced a collaboration on the development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to support radiologists and ultimately better serve patients. As part of the collaboration, Bayer will...

Ask Chat GPT about Your Radiation Oncolo…

Cancer patients about to undergo radiation oncology treatment have lots of questions. Could ChatGPT be the best way to get answers? A new Northwestern Medicine study tested a specially designed ChatGPT...