[Vitalink: a digital platform to share patient health records in primary care. Report of the pilot projects for sharing medication schemes].

Vitalink is a digital platform to share health patient data among health care professionals in primary care. The Flemish community started the development of this platform in collaboration with representatives of professional associations primary care. Sharing medication charts online was the first Vitalink project. In December 2012 four pilot regions in Flanders (Turnhout, Limburg, Aalst and Halle) tested medication chart sharing through Vitalink. Due to difficulties with software development effective sharing started only in April 2013. The test phase was ended in October 2013. Each pilot region made an evaluation report. Conclusions were similar: the realization business cases were limited. Integration in end user software was insufficiently performant. Moreover, interpretation of downloaded medication charts was found out to differ among participating software applications. Because of these problems exchange of patient records among primary care actors was limited. Therefore research questions could not be conclusively answered. Nevertheless the Vitalink pilot project can be considered successful in some ways. Collaboration and communication among health care professionals and their associations was ameliorated. The awareness of digital data sharing in primary care is growing. Pilot projects created buy in among patients, physicians, pharmacists and nurses. Uniform lay-out guidelines were established in deliberation with all participating actors. Since November 2013 Vitalink is in production. Medication charts, summarized electronic health records and vaccination data can be uploaded to the platform and health care professionals that are registered can consult them. End user software must still be developed to make broad use of the platform feasible. Meanwhile further deliberation with software vendors and professional associations can be organized in order to achieve the implementation and integration of user friendly Vitalink modules.