History of Electronic Prescriptions in Sweden: From Time-Sharing Systems via Smartcards to EDI

Managing prescriptions for medication, using ICT support, started in the 1970s with the computerization of the pharmacy branch offices where local systems registered handwritten prescriptions and to print labels. In 1984, the first online prescribing started with physicians connected to their local pharmacy system in a pilot test. Then in 1987, the first pilot test started with an off-line system in which PC-based prescriber support systems transferred data to patient-held smart cards that were taken to the pharmacy. In the 1990s, we had the first use of messaging using EDIFACT syntax for prescriptions. These had a relatively small volume until 2000, when an XML version of a European standard based on object-oriented modeling became popular and made electronic prescribing the normal practice, which meant important quality gains.