Medical electronic prescription for home respiratory care services (Pem-crd) at a Portuguese university tertiary care centre (2014–2018): a case study

Home respiratory care (HRC) is the provision of healthcare services at the place of residence of patients or their families, with the aim of meeting needs mainly resulting from chronic respiratory conditions, permanent disability, or terminal illness. In 2016, an innovative electronic prescription system, PEM-CRD, was fully implemented for HRC services in Portugal. To date, no study has addressed the impact of the execution of this digital innovation. For this purpose, we carried out an analysis of the prevalence and number of prescriptions for people with chronic respiratory diseases receiving HRC in the Lisbon metropolitan area, during 2014–2018, using the information obtained from the PEM-CRD database. The data analysis shows that while the number of patients receiving HRC treatment with a prescription has remained stable over the last four years, the number of prescriptions has significantly dropped since 2016 (2016–2018), with consequent paper and processes efficiency. The implementation of the digital Medical Electronic Prescription for Home Respiratory Care tool (PEM-CRD) and consequent dematerialization of these processes has increased the efficiency of prescribing in HRC. Additionally, the possibility of obtaining data through the PEM-CRD allows the monitoring of the evolving prevalence of therapies, improving the health services optimization and allowing reporting on data other than medicines.