Each socially insured person has had a digital health space (“My health space”) since 2022. This is a medical file accessible to all health professionals (self-employed, hospitals, medico-social establishments). They are encouraged to use the data and services contained in these personal digital spaces to better care for patients.
Such a system should also save time and paperwork. As far as savings are concerned, it’s a failure.
The latest report from the Court of Auditors on the application of the social security finance laws of 2024, which contains a chapter on “My health space”, recalls that the system cost 227 million euros (M€) nothing only for its design and 2 billion euros (€2 billion) to finance the updating of software for health professionals. To this, new spending should be added to prevent cyberattacks. The Ministry of Health has planned €10 million; according to the Court, €100 million should instead be provided. Another erroneous government forecast, it seems!
The problem is that all this spending doesn’t amount to much. If Social Security has opened an account for 65 million insured persons, only 15% have activated it, “without it being established whether the people who have carried out this activation are those for whom the system will be the most useful,” add the magistrates of rue Cambon.
The report is also very critical of doctors who show reservations in feeding and using the interface. However, as the Court writes, “My health space” cannot be a success if doctors remain in the background. However, the report does not propose a solution, apart from improving the software which, remember, has already cost €2 billion.
However, countries are managing to deploy such systems as we showed in our study on digital administration leaders. Denmark, for example, created its health platform Sundhed.dk in 2004. It is now used by one in three Danes at least once a month. In Estonia, a pioneering country in e-administration, online medical prescriptions are used by 100% of doctors. Perhaps we should have drawn inspiration from these experiences to deploy our system?
