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Health systems in transition
Portugal
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such as discharge summaries, reports of allergies or the use of surgical checklists,
all under national clinical guidelines (OECD, 2015a). However, the IT platforms
are not the same across the country; for example, a hospital in the North will
not use exactly the same system to record all the information as a hospital
in Algarve, although they have some aspects in common. Performance and
activity-based hospital indicators are collected and made available to hospital
providers and service users on an online platform on a monthly basis. However,
the available hospital data are not effectively connected with many other data
sources such as disease-based and vertical data collections and institutional
databases like
SClinico
(OECD, 2015a).
7.1.2 Health information management
Several information systems are run by the National Health Observatory
(
Observatório Nacional de Saúde
): the National Health Survey, the Sentinel
Network of GPs, the national register of birth defects, and the home and leisure
accidents surveillance system. Reports on the health of the population have
been produced by the DGH since 1997 (see section 5.1).
The introduction of a patient identity card in Portugal in 1995 followed an
international trend that emerged within the EU. The main advantage of a patient
identity card is to identify clearly the entity that is financially responsible for
the care provided to each patient on the one hand, and to identify exemptions
from co-payments that legally exist, on the other. The main impetus for the
creation of the patient identity card originated in the early 1990s, but its roll
out was slow. The card is free of charge to citizens. The RHAs are responsible
for issuing the card. Despite the slow rollout, in a short period of time there
were more cards than people, meaning that too many cards have been issued.
A new (and broader) Citizen Card was introduced in 2008, centralizing all the
individual’s information (identity, tax, social security and health) in a single
card (see section 4.1.4).
Two of the main institutes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health
have specific areas devoted to R&D. In 2004, INFARMED formed an R&D
office, in an attempt to develop a connection between industry, university and
the Institute itself. The government regards R&D in the national pharmaceutical
industry as an important sector for the Portuguese economy. Portugal has
several R&D centres and laboratories, whose work is focused on infectious
and genetic diseases, nutrition and food safety, chronic diseases, environmental
and health determinants. Traditionally, health research financing has been
carried out by the Ministry of Health and through the Portuguese Foundation
for Science and Technology (
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
).