Patient summary of a foreign citizen to an Estonian doctor
Overview of the service of patient summary
The portal for making queries about patient’s health data for an Estonian doctor is accessible here: https://pipa.digilugu.ee.
Patient summary is a supplementary, but not an exhaustive information source for a doctor who is treating a patient from another country (who has joined the service).
When determining the treatment of the patient, decisions should not only be done based on the patient summary, this data should be treated as supporting information.
The patient summary must not be the main basis for determining treatment or diagnosis, because it is never gives a complete overview of the patient's health history, and data loss or data generalisation may occur when information moves between countries.
Patient summary is a service in constant development, which is improved based on users’ feedback and extended according to joining EU countries.
Agreed datasets can be found here: https://www.riigiteataja.ee/akt/128082020014
The information of Estonian patients will be forwarded to a doctor abroad in agreed datasets. The data is retrieved based on queries made in the health information system. The data received will be transformed into data exchange messages established by the European Commission.
The technical functioning of the service and the datasets covered by it are the same as in the patient summary of Estonian patients. However, it must be taken into account that the details may differ by country, depending on which data gathering possibilities a country has and what decisions have been done in the process of forwarding data.
The patient summary must not be the main basis for determining treatment, it should be treated as supporting information. It is not possible to check the integrity of the data on the Estonian side.
Original data may contain information that is not displayed in the data translated into Estonian. In case of blank datasets, it should be noted that, for example, the message “No information about allergies” refers to the unavailability of information, while the message “No known allergies” marks that no allergies have been mentioned in the patient’s health information.