Bundesministerium für Gesundheit (Austria)

Federal Ministry of Health (Bundesministerium für Gesundheit), Austria is the main policy-maker in health care in Austria. Austria has one of the best health care systems in the world.

EHTEL Member (English) Homepage: www.bmg.gv.at/cms/home/thema.html

Information provided by the member:

The mission of the Ministry of Health is to ensure that this excellent standard of medical care is maintained in the future and further developed in a targeted way. In this context, cooperation and communication with all of our partners in the health care system is a top priority.Promoting the use of information technologies in healthcare is one of the defined priorities in the Austrian Health Reform Act 2005.

As the Austrian health system is organized federally using complex mechanisms in planning, guiding and financing, common goals had to be agreed between different levels of responsibility. The nationwide rollout of the "e-card"-(Health Insurance Card)-System was successfully finalized by the end of 2005. The e-card is used as the key card for health insurance verification. The hospitals will be integrated and different additional functionalities will be offered stepwise to all card-users. As the major midterm eHealth project the setup of a National Electronic Health Record (ELGA) has been defined.