February 05, 2013

e-turkey

yesterday  i tested turkey's new electronic medical records software, indirectly. every hospital and pharmacy must use it, and so anywhere in turkey health care professionals can log in and see your history and prescriptions. i think pharmacies only see prescriptions though, not x-rays and all that. private hospitals and family doctors started using the system first and then it was applied to the whole country.

so i called my doctor who was at work to prescribe me something i needed. he needed my turkish identity number (kimlik numarasi) for it and then he gave me a code. i went to the pharmacy with my kimlik number and the code they saw what i had been prescribed and i got it. tadaa. paper prescriptions are not accepted at all anymore, which might be good, they were just scribblings on any piece of paper.

at this point i must nod in approval of how cheap medication in turkey usually is with a prescription. with it, the gov. insurance pays -80% off the shelf price. i compared the price of the medicin i got in here and finland after the insurance deduction, and while i pay 1tl/0,4e here, in finland it would be 45tl/20e - even with the income level adjustment its safe to say the difference is big. of course some sad examples exist - contraception is illegally expensive in turkey, and i firmly believe that is partly AKP's doing - the prime minister keeps reminding people to have kids and raised his recommendation from 3 to 4 recently.

so this electronical medical records thing...  i'd loooove to see the user interface. knowing turkey, im pretty certain there are some glitches...  but doctor says its works fine for him. he doesnt have the time it use it anyway (med students type in the stuff written on notes by doctors). so unfortunately some or all ER visits go without proper information, but the dates, prescriptions and lab results are there at least. now i wonder how actively those who do have the time, fill the fields in there? i heard the system has some nice features though. when a patient was (mistakenly) diagnosed with a pneumonia, within minutes the health ministry disease control (or whatever) were calling to ask if it was accurate. and you can only prescribe meds matching  your diagnosis, they have some fancy algorithms for cross referencing them. so its kinda impressive.

this is how it looks like to doctors:
















page 19 shows how the turkish e-prescription system works


on saturday i accompanied Senni to Sinan Pasa Camii (mosque) in Besiktas. Senni is going around and admiring the art & architecture of mosques these days. i have just been bored and passive so i felt it was better to go out and somewhere rather than sit home again. Microsoft Photosynth pics are much more impressive viewed on a phone screen, but here is one flattened out anyway;














last weekend was eventful i suppose. house parties and bars and stuff. all in all nice but i think i could take it easier this week. not that it was crazy or anything, but i want to calm down even more.

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