Challenges of Comparing Medication eHealth Services in the Nordic Countries

A prescription and medication service that is optimised to protect against unnecessary harm is an essential component of a safer healthcare system. To this means, the Nordic countries have put considerable efforts in digitizing their prescription and dispensing processes and making medication eHealth services available for clinicians, pharmacists and patients. As these e-services are being established and applied, there is a need to monitor and learn from their use. This paper reports from a sub-study of a larger activity on developing indicators for monitoring eHealth services in the Nordic countries. We describe different medication eHealth services and compare their availabiliy to professionals and patients in the Nordic countries. We found that an ePrescription service is available for clinicians and patients in all Nordic countries, but services that enable renewal or viewing of prescriptions by patients are not commonly available yet. A major challenge when comparing medication eHealth services is the fact that definitions of indicators vary between countries.