As Australia gets ready for the vast bulk of its population to be able to access a summary of their health data and share it with their healthcare professionals through the My Health Record, the European Union is getting ready to create what is in effect a European-wide Electronic Health Record through an agreed data exchange format.

This week, Finland and Estonia became the first EU countries to allow digital prescriptions issued in one country to be retrieved electronically when the patient is in the other country without having to present a written script.