TALLINN — Estonians will be able to set up appointments and doctors can prescribe medicine online in 2010 as part of an EU-funded e-health project, but the system has hit some snags.

The system, developed by the Estonian e-Health Foundation, simplifies the patient’s registration process for doctor appointments and makes medicine shopping easier. The cross-country e-registration system gives the list of all the doctors and health services around Estonia so the patient can choose the most convenient one and provides patient information exchange for doctors.

In addition to convenience the new system, funded by 34.5 million krooni (€2.2 million) from the European Union structural funds, is also designed to avoid the accidental loss of analysis and patient examination documents that sometimes occurs.

Margit Loikmaa, communication specialist for Estonian e-Health Foundation said that establishing the system is important because the system would be useful instrument for both the doctor and patient.

“Launching the system has not been as fast as was expected in the beginning of this year, but the number of users is on stable growth,” Loikmaa told Baltic Reports.

The cross-country registration system is part of the big e-health project that covers digital health history, digital prescription recipe system, and e-registration system. Ly Uibopuu, e-Health Foundation service desk analyst told that the foundation’s goal is to apply the system by the end of next year.

“We are trying to establish the e-registration within next 12 months, but only time can tell how things will work out,” Uibopuu told Baltic Reports

Inga Lill, communication specialist of the Northern Estonia Regional Hospital told that they are one of the first ones to put the e-registration system into practice.

“We have done all the preparations for the new system and our registration system was launched on April 9,“ Lill told Baltic Reports. “We are happy that our patients have found the system useful as it is comfortable for the patients to use.“

The medical recipe program will be launched already in Jan. 2010 with the transition period of two months. By March, all the prescriptions will have to be processed digitally.

Although the regional digital health systems are in use also in other countries such as the U.S., Sweden, Finland and many others, Estonia is the first to develop a cross-country digital health service system.

The project has not gone off without a hitch. The doctors are not yet ready to apply the system in full part, because of health care budget cuts and technical difficulties with installing the system. The digital health history has not gained much popularity among doctors and the medicine recipe system is not favored, either.

Minister of the Social Affairs Hanno Pevkur is also concerned about the expensive system is not being used much. In an interview to the daily Eesti Päevaleht Pevkur said that one of the reasons for the poor use of the system is because the current system is hard to connect with the new one.

“The system is working, but we have to make sure that the service providers would join it,” Pevkur told Eesti Päevaleht. “The motivation should come from the patients … if there would not have any problems with IT-development, everything would be fine, but in general everything is moving in the right direction. Also the excessive state budget cuts have been depressing the process.”

Some doctors fear the system is being changed too rapidly. Katrin Rehemaa, general secretary of the Estonian Medical Association said that the medicine recipe system itself is fine but there are also problems which must be solved before its full launch.

“The project is raw and has not been tested enough. The pharmacies have also had technical problems so it’s not possible to launch the digital recipe system in full capacity,” Rehemaa told Baltic Reports.

The digital health history system is having the same problem. Rehemaa is concerned that the state has made a huge system relying on EU funds, but the family doctors and health service providers have to adapt the system with their own funds.

“The system was put in use when the economic system was going uphill but if now there is no money to spend then it cannot be demanded,” told Rehemaa.