Electronic recipes have no time for experiments

The experiment to create a federal registry, where it was planned to collect data on all issued electronic prescriptions for drugs, was never launched. As Kommersant learned, owned by Pharmstandard and Tsifrozdrav CRPT, which was supposed to become the operator of the system, stopped working on the project. Now the Ministry of Health intends to collect information on appointments to the federal register of persons with certain diseases that it is creating. However, this will not solve the main problem when electronic prescriptions issued in one region are not recognized in another, experts say.

Tsifrozdrav, which was supposed to become the operator of the experiment to create a federal registry of electronic prescriptions for drugs, has stopped working on the project, the company’s report says. It states that in 2023, 17.5 million rubles that were spent on the project were written off.

The president instructed the government to create such a register in April 2022. At the same time, the Ministry of Health published a draft resolution on conducting an experiment on the operation of the registry from July 2022 to May 2023 in Bashkiria, Tatarstan, Belgorod and Moscow regions. But it never started.

It follows from the ministry’s document that Tsifrozdrav itself proposed to become the operator of the experiment “free of charge” without using the obtained data for commercial purposes or transferring it to third parties. Based on its results, it was planned to select a permanent system operator on a competitive basis.

As of April 2022, Tsifrozdrav was 49% owned by MIG Digital, a structure of Viktor Kharitonin’s Pharmstandard, and 51% owned by the operator of the TsRPT labeling system. In August 2023, MIG Digital left the project, 100% of the company was consolidated by CRPT, as follows from the data in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The Ministry of Health was against access to the Pharmstandard experiment as a commercial structure, Kommersant’s source in the pharmaceutical market knows. Pharmstandard did not respond to Kommersant’s request. The CRPT told Kommersant that Tsifrozdrav is not currently carrying out any business activities.

In the absence of a unified registry, each region independently decides how to implement the electronic prescription system and selects contractors. But this leads to significant problems, since due to differences in work at regional levels, a patient who was given a prescription in one subject of the Russian Federation cannot receive the medicine for it in another, Pharmvestnik previously reported.

Now information about electronic prescriptions is planned to be consolidated in the federal register of persons with certain diseases and conditions, which will operate within the framework of the Unified State Information System in the field of healthcare (Uniform State Health Information System), the Ministry of Health told Kommersant. The ministry published a draft resolution on the creation of such a register at the beginning of September 2023; it should come into force on September 1, 2024 and be valid for six years. The register will be maintained by the Ministry of Health, as the operator of the Uniform State Health Information System.

The ministry claims that uploading electronic prescriptions to this register will allow using existing data from the Ministry of Health, the Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund and other systems. This, according to officials, should simplify the work of health workers and “ensure a high degree of security of information in the Unified State Health Information System.”

The need for a register remains, as this directly affects the transparency and speed of exchange of electronic prescriptions between all participants in the process, says Kirill Khromov, managing director of the First Electronic Prescription operator. Regional electronic prescription systems can only be considered a temporary solution, says Nikolay Bespalov, development director at RNC Pharma. To solve global problems, such as recognizing prescriptions from one region in another, planning the volume of drug purchases, in any case, a unified federal system is needed, the expert believes. In his opinion, the creation of a patient register, which the Ministry of Health is talking about, only partly solves the problem, since electronic prescriptions need to be distributed not only when prescribing drugs under benefits, but also in pharmaceutical retail.

Polina Gritsenko