The electroni c healthcare record: The first attempt to a national strategy – why it failed and how it developed into today’s situation

Abstract

This paper begins with a short historical overview showing important steps in the ICT development in Danish healthcare with emphasis on the Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR), the most discussed application in the Danish healthcare sector. In 1996 the Ministry of Health, based on a Danish governmentally launched ICT-program, created a vision and a strategy for the development of the EHR. The process resulting in this strategy is described, and the main lines of the strategy are outlined. Unfortunately, the following activities were characterized by uncoordinated development governed by local political or technical strategies in the different counties leading to lack of standardization. The last part of the paper describes how the technology development calls for a new way of thinking collaborative systems and it shows the impact of the development of central national repositories and discusses the current implementation problems.