The government officially launches this Thursday “My health space”, a new digital public service integrating the computerized medical record. Prescriptions, hospitalization reports, analysis results… This new tool should allow “all French people to store and access their health data with complete confidence and security”, according to the Ministry of Health, which tested the device in three departments, including the Somme.
Automatic creation
All medical documents are intended to be found there, at the initiative of the caregivers or the insured person, who will also be able to provide information on their current vaccines, allergies and treatments. Each will also have a secure messaging to exchange information with its healthcare professionals, and diary to manage his medical appointments.
These basic services will be supplemented by a “catalog” applications referenced by the public authorities, for example for the monitoring of chronic diseases, teleconsultation or prevention. The “revolution” will be fast promises the government: by the summer, the some 68 million French people – including children – will see themselves automatically endowed with a “_health space”_, unless they take the step of refusing it. This will require using a “temporary code” received by e-mail or by post, valid only for six weeks. After this time, it will still be possible to close your “health space”, but its data will remain archived for ten years by the Health Insurance.
“Accompaniement”
After the failure of the personal (then shared) medical file (DMP), which was based on voluntary membership, the government hopes to avoid a new failure: in mid-2021, 10 million people had a personal medical file, far from the target of 40 million by 2023 announced by the executive at the start of the five-year term.
“We needed some proactive actions,” commented to AFP the president of France Assos Santé, Gérard Raymond, a supporter of this “form of citizen empowerment”. Its federation of patient associations insists, however, on “proximity support for users”, especially those at risk of “to find oneself in difficulty in the face of digital tools” : elderly, impoverished, rural, disabled, migrants… The authorities’ communication effort will be decisive.
Professionals “wait to see”
Despite its planned generalization, “My health space” is not immune to a new fiasco, if the files created remain abandoned empty shells. Installed near Toulouse in Haute-Garonne, one of the departments where the device was tested, Dr Jean-Louis Bensoussan told AFP to have it “not used a lot”. Moreover “no patient offered it to me”, said the secretary general of MG France (main organization among liberal generalists) to the press agency. He claims to have receivedvery little information” on this tool of which he “does not necessarily need”.
Caution shared by the president of the Order of Doctors in the Somme. Dr. Henri Foulques”wait to see” how will the deployment take place: “It’s an excellent idea, it could be wonderful, provided you have good interoperability. That is to say that the doctors do not spend 10 minutes trying to send the data, that they are transmitted between the different establishments… it is to be seen.”