Chile

Health Informatics Office is the unit that has been entrusted by the Ministry of Health to deliver a project that will use health information technology to ensure appropriate use of electronic medical records throughout the country.

Since the amount of information is growing every day, creating knowledge has become a great challenge. Standardization and correct use of available tools will allow us to achieve our objectives. Moreover, being a part of an international community will let us share best practices, and further reducing the needed time to implement the whole project.

The major goal is to provide terminology services to the whole health system, using SNOMED CT as the basis, not only limited to diagnosis or procedures. Health Informatics Office is working in a National Pharmaceutical Terminology that will allow nationwide coordination with every related agency. Great expectations are due. In the long run we foresee every hospital and primary care facility exchanging relevant information for better patient care, information management and policies definition.