By 2012 Tatarstan citizens will have electronic medical cards and will be able to make appointment with a doctor online

Making distant appointment with a doctor and maintenance of medical cards in electronic format will be the priority services of informatization of Tatarstan health care system in the context of target program “Modernization of RT health care system in 2011-2012”, Vice-premier – Minister of informatization and coomunications Nikolay Nikiforov informed at a joint session of the Ministry of health care and Ministry of informatization and coomunications.

The event was held in Technopark in the sphere of high technologies “IT-park” with participation of PM Ildar Khalikov.

Before the session Head of Tatarstan Government overhauled the exhibition of advanced developments in the sphere of health care informatization, in particular a tablet computer for medical personnel, the system of distant consultations based on Children republican clinical hospital, unified data base of electronic medical cards. According to Nikolay Nikiforov by the end of 2012 the percentage of distant appointments in republic will make 50 % and medical electronic cards – 25 %.
Currently making appointment online is available in Nizhnekamsk municipal region and oncological institutions.

By words of Tatarstan health care minister Airat Farrakhov this service is the most popular in the industry today. He believes the main idea of granting state services online is to make the process easier at the expense of information technologies.

The minister highlighted the priority task is informing citizens about health care services, posting reference information, and all documents needed.

“The Portal of public and municipal services is functioning in Republic. It is a unified resource by which every citizen can get information about all services rendered by public and municipal institutions of the Republic and use these services”, Airat Farrakhov said.

Nikolay Nikiforov reported on planned actions in the context of target program “Modernization of RT health care system in 2011-2012”. They include network assembly, equipment delivery, information security, and implementation of special medical software.

PM Ildar Khalikov marked upon implementing new systems it is important to provide feedback with doctors.

Summing up, Ildar Khalikov stressed doctors still have to do a lot of paper work spending 20 % of their time for completing various documents. At the same time health care industry is the leading one by the number of services rendered to the public. These factors speak about the need for implementing information systems in order to improve the quality of services.

According to Ildar Khalikov Tatarstan has already obtained experience in this area, there are concrete tasks and pilot projects. “It is very essential to carry out the process of informatization at all levels. The federal program of health care modernization is our chance we should use to improve the quality of health care services in Republic”, PM said.

Finally Ildar Khalikov granted state awards to several doctors.