Being able to collect a medicine in another European country without presenting a paper prescription is not a future project: it is already possible today between several countries connected to the MyHealth@EU network (Spain among them). And from 2029 it will become a reality across the entire European Union.

As we discussed in our introduction to the European Health Data Space (EHDS), the new regulation transforms the cross-border exchange of clinical information. If your organisation develops healthcare software, manages health records or runs pharmacy networks, the question is no longer whether you will have to be interoperable, but how you are going to prepare your systems to operate in this single market for health data.

What are the primary uses of health data?

The EHDS defines primary use as the collection and exchange of clinical information for direct patient care: diagnosis, treatment, prescription, dispensing of medicines and the management of associated administrative or reimbursement services.

In this primary use, the EHDS directly strengthens citizens’ control over their information:

• Access and history rights: Patients can access their data immediately and free of charge, download copies and see which professionals have accessed them.
• Management autonomy: They can also restrict access, request corrections of errors and, depending on each country’s legislation, exercise the right to opt out of cross-border exchanges.

For healthcare professionals, this means faster access to key clinical information on patients coming from other Member States. Within MyHealth@EU, two main electronic services stand out:

• ePrescription and eDispensation: cross-border management of prescribing and dispensing medicines.
• Patient Summary: a summarised medical record for unplanned or emergency care.

How do ePrescription and eDispensation work in practice?

The ePrescription is the digital prescription issued by a healthcare professional in the patient’s country of residence, transmitted electronically through the National Digital Health Node. The eDispensation takes place when the pharmacy in the destination country accesses that prescription and dispenses the medicine.

The cross-border data flow in four steps

1. Issuance: The doctor prescribes the medication in the national system of the country of origin (Country A).
2. Transmission: The patient travels to the destination country (Country B). The ePrescription is sent through the MyHealth@EU cross-border infrastructure.
3. Dispensing: The pharmacy in Country B verifies the patient’s identity (using an ID card or passport), accesses the digital prescription and hands over the medicine (eDispensation).
4. Return notification: The system in Country B notifies Country A’s system of the dispensing, automatically updating the patient’s pharmacy record.

In Spain, the Ministry of Health coordinates the integration of the National Health System (SNS) into this European node, allowing a prescription issued in your autonomous community to be dispensed in the pharmacy network of the participating countries.

The three challenges of pharmaceutical interoperability for the IT sector

Although these services are already operational, extending them across the entire European Union requires overcoming operational divergences between Member States. If your organisation develops or manages prescribing systems, you need to address three technical fronts:

• Regulatory and operational compatibility: Technical specifications must be aligned with the legislation of each Member State, taking into account the handling of multiple prescriptions, substitution rules in pharmacies and the different competences assigned to prescribing professionals.
• Medicine identification and coding: Since each country uses its own nomenclatures and catalogues, interoperability requires moving towards common reference vocabularies and codes in order to precisely identify the equivalent active ingredient.
• Evolution of the eHealth Network framework: The European guidelines set the technical architecture of the exchange. Version 3.1 on ePrescription and eDispensation (published in November 2024) consolidates the technical consistency of these flows without changing the basic use cases.

The lesson for the healthcare sector

The cross-border electronic prescription confirms that European healthcare interoperability is a technical reality already under way. For hospitals, public health services, pharmacies and software providers, the EHDS sets out a roadmap with specific dates. Assessing how to adapt your systems to the MyHealth@EU specifications will help you avoid regulatory roadblocks and position your technology offering in the European single market for health data.