Background

Sundhed.dk is the unified Danish eHealth Portal providing both access to and information about all the Danish Healthcare Services.

Since its launch in 2003, sundhed.dk provides several functionalities such as quality assured health information, access to medical records and medication, and an overview of the Danish healthcare system. Sundhed.dk creates linkages between existing data sources, opens up data sets to new user groups, and facilitates communication between healthcare providers and citizens. The portal also ensures further development not only by providing a secure infrastructure, search optimization, and user interfaces, but also by supporting the development of new services. 

There are two purposes of the eHealth Portal. The first is to support the national goals of the Danish Healthcare Service, and the second is to communicate current activities of the Danish Healthcare Service.

The initiative to establish The Danish eHealth Portal was taken by the Association of County Councils in Denmark, the Ministry of Interior and Health and others back in 2001.

A comparatively modest investment in infrastructure and a shared system has resulted in the development of services that are used across municipalities and regions all over Denmark – and have thus helped regional and local parts of the health service avoid massive investments in solutions that could only be used regionally and locally instead of being compatible

The Danish eHealth Portal was developed as the result of a project competition (EU open procedure). The nine-month development phase was launched in December 2003. Many editors maintain local websites at the portal, and new services are launched regularly.

In 2009 the eHealth portal was upgraded and relaunched on a new technical platform.

While the portal has a steady group of GP’s as very frequent users, a general shift was noted in the citizens’ use of the portal during 2010: The share of total page views presented to a citizen logged on increased to about 45 % - sometimes even more. Up until this development, public demand for the personalized services was slightly disappointing to some.

The purpose of The Danish eHealth Portal

The purpose of the portal is to:

• Bring together relevant information from all parts of the health service 
• Offer a shared platform of communication 
• Empower patients by offering maximum insight and transparency in the health care sector 
• Offer health care providers easy access to clinical information about their patients’ medical history.

Denmark has been first mover on many IT initiatives within health services. The majority of these initiatives are based on a common infrastructure, which has helped put Denmark in pole position and create a patient-centric health sector. 

Sundhed.dk is a public, internet-based portal that collects and distributes health care information among citizens and health care professionals. It is unique in bringing the entire Danish health care sector together on the Internet and providing an accessible setting for citizens and health care professionals to meet and efficiently exchange information.

Additionally, every citizen has his own personal page (available upon identification), which reflects the specific situation of this particular citizen. Here, the citizen can find accurate and updated health care information, e.g.:

• view treatments and diagnoses from his own hospital patient record
• book appointments with his general practitioner (GP)
• renew prescription drugs
• monitor own drug compliance
• survey shortest waiting lists for operations and quality ratings of hospitals
• register as organ donor
• get access to local disease management systems in out-patient Clinics.

Health professionals can also log on and gain secure and controlled access to personal data regarding patients they are actively treating.

By servicing both the citizens and the health professionals, the portal enables the two to achieve a cooperation based on the same data. This empowers the citizen and gives the health professionals better tools to improve quality in care. And until now sundhed.dk has focused especially on tools for the GP’s, who are the “gate keepers” in the Danish Health care system

The Danish eHealth Portal is committed to following the principle that healthcare issues are solved at the primary treatment level (typically by the general practitioners (GPs)). The Danish eHealth Portal accomplishes this by supporting and continuing to develop the existing processes.

The Danish eHealth Portal facilitates communication between the stakeholders in the Danish Healthcare Services. A crucial indicator of success for the portal is to assist healthcare professionals in providing quicker and better quality services by combining web-based services with clinical work.