Turkey e-Prescription services

e-Prescription is the electronically written version of the information contained in the hand-written prescription. This project started on 01.07.2012 in Turkey and became mandatory as of 15.01.2013. However, in some exceptional cases, the e-Prescription application is not mandatory.

In the e-Prescription, the MEDULA tracking number is created during the patient’s application to the health institution; The information received here is added to the recipe through the automation system during the creation of the e-Prescription.

It can be argued that the main purpose of the e-prescription application is to reduce labor and cost, to prevent loss, leakage, abuse and counterfeiting. It can be said that this application, which has a very recent history in the Turkish health care industry, is examined by the physicians, who are the main users of the system, and there are no studies on the responsiveness of the MEDULA infrastructure.

In the electronic prescription application, the system supported by the patient’s identity verification systems eliminates the health card and referral paper and ensures that all transactions are carried out in a digital environment.

With the electronic prescription application, the Social Security Institution controls all information in the electronic environment and can classify the data statistically. The system provides many benefits such as minimizing human-induced errors, saving time, fast service, patient follow-up and reducing health expenses by controlling unnecessary drug use, ease of inspection, and prevention of possible abuses.

Prior to the introduction of electronic prescription, it was possible to write an illegal prescription by any health institution or physician who learned the patient’s information. As a result of using e-Prescription together with identity verification systems, the possibility of prescribing medication without the knowledge of the patient is also eliminated.

Some features of Turkey e-Prescription services

• The e-Prescription system is linked with SaÄŸlık-Net and seamlessly integrated with the healthcare provider information systems through Medula Web Services, so that the health professionals continue prescribing medications via their regular interfaces.
• Health professionals provide medication details together with the ICD-10 codes of patient’s diagnoses in an e-Prescription.
• Each e-Prescription is assigned a unique identifier by the e-Prescription system.
• The health professionals can also view patients’ ongoing medications and the amount not yet consumed.
• The same facilities are offered to health professionals also through a Web-based application served by the Social Security Institution.
• Patients apply to pharmacies for dispensation with their citizen IDs and unique e-Prescription identifiers provided by the health professional.
• Using the Medula Pharmacy Software, the pharmacies are able to query, view and dispense the e-Prescriptions.
• The system also keeps track of all the medications provided to the patient so far, prevents unnecessary dispensation, and offers replacements whenever a specific product is not available.
• Finally, the system is used by the Social Security Institution for the reimbursement of pharmacies.

Maryam Ghalandari