Electronic Health Records Management and Preservation: The Case of Slovenia

This paper presents and discusses the technological possibilities that information technology (IT) offers within the health sector, focusing on health information technology (HIT), electronic health records (EHR), personal health records (PHR) and practice management systems (PMS). The current development in this area in the world shows that this topic is important and is included in the strategies, policies and plans of many countries, in some places even being pushed to the obligatory level. Consequently, there is a huge interest within the private sector for development and marketing of products that cover this area. Governments also therefore include the private sector in the strategic planning of solutions that can integrate different networks of public administration, particularly in the health sector. As is always the case and particularly here, because of the many players involved, these projects cost a lot of money, causing sceptics and critics to question the reasonableness, usefulness, ROI and similar topics. Slovenia is no exception in this area, in both positive and negative sense. Slovenian health reforms include the development of integrated health systems costing over a hundred million Euros, and many health practitioners in Slovenia lack internet connections, modern IT equipment, etc. Empirical research regarding the Slovenian health sectors, which was carried out in 2011 and is examined within the preliminary analysis presented in this paper, will outline the real situation in this area.