Sharing patient data
As a doctor you know how important it is - in the context of the continuity of care - to exchange health data of patients.
To share patient data, you must:
- give the patient his informed consent first;
- register with a hub that ensures a smooth and secure exchange of health data.
Hubs and meta hub
Thanks to the hubs and the metahub, you have real-time and secure access to your patient's medical records, giving you an overall picture of their health. The available data comes from healthcare institutions all over Belgium.
Hubs
A hub is a regional exchange network.
There are currently four hubs in Belgium where general practitioners and specialists can share health data electronically with each other in a secure manner. And this both in a hospital and in a private practice.
- Regional hubs in Flanders
- Collaborative Care Platform (CoZo), including the Antwerp Regional Hub (ARH)
- Flemish Hospital Network KU Leuven (VZN)
- Regional hub in Brussels
- Regional hub in Wallonia
What features are available in the hubs?
The number of features available to patients and physicians varies by hub.
In each hub, the patient can:
- record or delete informed consent;
- manage therapeutic relationships (e.g. excluding certain healthcare providers or pharmacists from access).
Some hubs have an additional function that allows the patient to request who has viewed their data.
Only physicians who have a therapeutic relationship with the patient are allowed access to their health information, provided that the patient has given their informed consent .
The law 'Protection of personal data' also applies to electronic requests for patient data. In the event of a complaint, you can request which information was consulted by which doctor. This also means that treating physicians, who are also insurance physicians, may only request patient data that are relevant to the treatment and the therapeutic relationship they have with their patient.
Medical records from hospitals, laboratories and healthcare facilities are kept where they were created. They are available 24 hours a day for the inpatient and extramural doctors. Only the references to these documents are centralized.
To use a hub, you must first register through its portal site.
Then you can:
- record a patient's informed consent;
- indicate a therapeutic relationship with a patient who is already enrolled;
- consult a patient's list of medical reference documents (e.g. care pathways);
- consult medical documents, possibly with attachments or images;
- upload a Sumehr;
- modulate the access rights of your documents, according to the available functionalities of the platform;
- consult the history of access to a dossier or document in some hubs.
meta hub
The federal platform eHealth is used as a metahub.
- It connects all networks so that healthcare providers can consult the available documents about a patient, regardless of where they are stored. As a result, as a doctor you only have to consult one hub to receive the information from all hubs.
- It manages security via a login with your eID card.
Why register with a hub?
Working electronically is only possible if work is done via a hub or metahub.
Registering with a hub offers many advantages:
- Registration is free and gives access - via the metahub - to information from the other hubs.
- You get, 24 hours a day, a general picture of the health of your patients.
- This improves the quality of care because you know your patient's medical history. You prevent useless or duplicate tests and prevent prescription of medicines that the patient is not allowed to take.
- This also ensures better cooperation and communication between all care providers who are responsible for the care.
- The hubs and metahub are fully integrated into your patient software. You only have to use one program, so more time savings and efficiency .
How to request data via a hub?
Only physicians with a therapeutic relationship with the patient can access the documents shared on a hub.
You can access it through your patient software or the hub or metahub platform.
First you have to sign a one-time agreement with the CoZo platform about its free use.
You can then request data via the web portal or in the future from your own software package.
First you have to register with VZN.
You can then log in to the interactive viewer to request documents from all hubs and diagnostic images from the Leuven collaboration.
Vitalink is a platform, not a computer program.
You have access via your trusted software, in which Vitalink is integrated. You can therefore only use Vitalink if your software has been modified. Currently, this is only the case for a limited number of software packages for healthcare providers. That will change in the coming months. After all, the umbrella organizations have made agreements with their software suppliers about adapting the software.
- If your software program is not listed in the overview of homologated software, please contact your software developer.
- Do you not yet have a digital eHealth certificate to identify yourself as a recognized healthcare provider? Request one on the eHealth platform. Your software supplier can help you with this. Vivel.be can also support you, both with the installation of the certificate and with working electronically (through training).
Sumehr
Sumehr, also called summary health record, stands for SUMmarized Electronic Health Record.
A sumehr provides an up-to-date health picture of the patient and can be created by any doctor. Often, however, it is the GMD-holding general practitioner who does this for his patient. Each patient can ask his doctor to draw up a sumehr and determine the content together.
What is it?
A sumehr:
- is not a complete health file, but contains the most important data that are useful for medical follow-up;
- evolves with the patient's medical history;
- is a liaison document between the electronic medical records (EMR) of general practitioners and specialists: they can consult all or part of a sumehr according to the established access rules and provided they have a formal therapeutic relationship with the patient.
Most software packages already integrated the functionality to create, view and change a sumehr. The layout may differ per package.
The homologated medical software programs can produce (export) or integrate (import) electronic sheets with sumehr data in a standardized way.
If you have any questions about your software package, it is best to contact your software supplier .
Sumehr premium
As a general practitioner you can receive a Sumehr premium if you:
- are a recognized general practitioner;
- create a Sumehr for the premium year for a certain number of different patients.
This is a fixed allowance. The amount depends on the effective use of the e-tools. More information can be found on the website of the Riziv.
