A step towards the electronic EHIC

a) Overview

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b) Objectives and Benefits

The central positioning of the project is to serve as an experimental test bed for the electronification of the EHIC.

The project is aimed at:

- Providing reliable and interoperable solutions for the European Health Insurance Card electronification

- Enhancing interstate data exchange while using secure IT network software applications incorporating professional and personal smart cards with PKI and Digital Signature

- Contributing to mobility and skills convergent policy while improving Health Care Access for Mobile citizens

These objectives will contribute to:

- Support the initiative of the European Commission aiming to harmonize quality and availability of the Health Care and Social services delivered inside the EU

- Reduce fraudulent or irrelevant claims, thus avoiding expensive interstate health costs claim procedure

- Foster the Smart Card & Telecom Industry inside the European Union

- Enable patients and health professionals to collaborate and share insurance and other patient data for continuity of care

- Offer a user-friendly and secure systems to provide healthcare workers with important administrative information

- Support increased mobility thus improving the citizens’ quality of life.

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The primary operators of the NETC@RDS services are health care providers in hospitals and ambulatory health care offices. Administrative staff in these medical units already frequently encounter persons coming from abroad and presenting their European Health Insurance Card. The value-added benefit of using NETC@RDS is that it can read the EHIC electronically. This enables manual and paper based administrative processes to be reduced and has the added benefit of providing an accurate electronic EHIC data set for post processing.

The secondary target users are health insurance and cross border cost clearance organisations which have signed the NETC@RDS General Agreement, involved in the reimbursement process. Electronic data capture and automated checking mechanisms will provide a much better base for clarification of inconsistencies, acquisition of statistical data, and improvement of the pan-European reimbursement process.

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d) The service

The NETC@RDS service for electronification of the EHIC serves three distinct processes:

- automated data capture for identification based on a common set of data elements

- on-line verification of entitlement rights via national portals, and

- minimal data provision which can contribute to subsequent back-office interstate-billing.

The specific content of the NETC@RDS service is predicated on the patient EHIC data, and verification data in the national health insurance databases. The specification of this data is provided by the European regulatory bodies.

The common area of interest is in mutual use and recognition of the pan-European standardised eEHIC as a means of validating entitlement to unplanned health care. In addition two other cases are included: optical recognition of existing EHIC cards, and data capture of an eEHIC identification data set, incorporated in a national e-ID from specific member states of the participating partners.

The NETC@RDS service is expected to be the crystallisation point for a future electronic EHIC on the pan-European level.

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e) The consortium

The partners of the NETC@RDS Consortium are the providers of the NETC@RDS Services, and include health care providers and health insurance agencies from 15 European countries. The consortium is composed of:

- Statutory health insurance or health fund organisations

- Technical and research institutions or standardisation bodies acting on behalf of the health insurance organisations

- Hospital and/or health professional associations

- Regional governments

The consortium is politically supported by government health authorities.

A full list of project partners profiles can be found here

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f) Technical approach

The NETC@RDS service architecture is adopted from NETC@RDS market validation phases. It comprises a secure network of national service portals and databases, accessed from authorized and identified health professionals, certificates stored in various devices depending on the national scheme (e.g. workstation hard disks, health professional cards, USB keys).

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g) NETC@RDS Service Sites