If the DMP (shared medical file) has not had the expected success, the government intends to move up a gear with “My health space”, which will be created automatically for each French person.
Tomorrow, February 3, 2022, the deployment phase of “My health space” will begin. Automatically created for all French people, this new public service will integrate the computerized medical file of each citizen. An old sea serpent envisaged since Nicolas Sarkozy’s five-year term, but never implemented in practice. For the Ministry of Health, this heralds a “revolution” at least as important as the arrival of the vital card.
For its launch, “My health space” will not be entitled to its dedicated application and will only be accessible in the form of a website, where the medical data of French people will be stored. “safely”, insists the Health Insurance. This is obviously one of the first fears raised when talking about this computerized medical file, hosting sensitive personal data, in a world where zero risk does not seem to exist in terms of hacking.
The “confidentiality” praised by the ministry is therefore subject to debate, knowing that this online medical file will contain all types of medical documents, ranging from treatments followed to drug allergies, including reports of operations, test results, dates vaccinations and even prescriptions. If the insured person will be able to add and fill in elements in this space himself, all authorized health professionals will also be able to interact on the platform. You will also find a diary to manage your medical appointments and a secure messaging system to exchange with professionals. Eventually, teleconsultation could even become part of the system.
Everyone concerned, including children
The automatic creation of this new space will concern all French people, including children. Thus, the Ministry of Health explains that in the summer of 2022, the 68 million of our fellow citizens will have this digital health record.
But automatic does not mean mandatory: indeed, it is possible to oppose the opening of your online health space. To do this, an option will be available on the site, giving rise to the sending of a code to be activated within six weeks. Attention, without action on his part, each patient will see his health space automatically created. And if it will always be possible to request its deactivation, the data it contains will remain archived for ten years, we learn from BFMTV.
A forced shared medical record
This time, the approach is therefore very different from the process used for the shared medical file (DMP), the creation of which was carried out at the initiative of the patient. Emmanuel Macron and his government hoped for the opening of 40 million DMPs, now integrated into the health space, by 2023. We are barely at more than 10 million. Hence the urgency, no doubt, of opting for an automated approach which, for certain opposition parties, resembles a new forced passage.
At the end of an initial test phase carried out on 3.3 million policyholders, the refusal rate was very low, around 0.7%. Nevertheless, some people wonder about the level of patient information concerning the automatic creation of their space, as well as about the support for the elderly, isolated, precarious and/or who do not have access to computers.
Our colleagues from BFMTV interviewed a few doctors and professionals from the departments where the deployment test took place last year and their feedback is not really enthusiastic. One of the doctors interviewed, secretary general of the majority organization of liberal general practitioners, admits that he has hardly used the device since its introduction and that no patient has spoken to him about it. He says he has been very little informed of the operation of this tool, which he does not feel the need for. The Union of General Medicine regrets that the collection of free and informed consent from patients is not required even before the creation of this digital file.