Digital health in Belgium: Recent legislative evolutions, promising perspectives

The E-Health Programme1, launched by the Minister of Public Health, revolves around 20 pillars (also called "action points"), each one dealing with different policy issues, from fostering administrative simplification and terminology policy in eHealth to implementing a fully fledged online database for patients’ health data and records. While all pillars appear to have been addressed - with differing degrees of success - by the legislature five years into the Programme, three questions remain at this stage:

• first is the question of mobile health ("action point" no. 20 of the E-Health Programme) and the development of a pyramidal certification system for mobile health technologies in Belgium
• the second relates to the use of digital patient records throughout the country and electronic prescriptions - compulsory since 1 May 2018 - which pose challenges in terms of scope and accessibility, and
• the third involves the need for further consideration to be given to the current barriers to telemedicine-based programmes and, to a certain extent, the recourse to telemonitoring care at local level.

Download the full article here