COPENHAGEN, Denmark – It's no secret that Nordic countries are decades ahead of some oftheir European peers in healthcare IT infrastructure and development.Visitors to this year's World of Health IT show in Copenhagen wereoffered a look at Denmark's system, which relies on the Sundhed eHealthPortal to connect patients and providers.

An eye-catching fixture of the WoHIT exhibition floor was theDanish Village - a large, bright structure composed of several infostations mapping the flow of information through the Danish healthcaresystem. This flow largely depends on Sundhed, which 300,000 Danishpatients use each month to manage their personal health records.

Sundhed, Denmark's first public personal ehealth portal, existsin three formats: An open, public internet room for discussion andgeneral information; a closed portal for physicians to access patientrecords and consult privately; and a secure, personalized environmentin which patients access their own health information and communicatewith providers.

"We started the project in 2000 because we needed a platformwhere we could have secure dialogue between professionals, and a securedialogue between professionals and the patients," said Finn Klamer, MD,founder of the Sundhed portal.

"The family doctor in Denmark is a gatekeeper - a coordinator," Klamersaid. He launched the portal with the idea that the doctor would beable to follow a patient through every hospital, clinic, laboratory andpharmacy in Denmark, in order to manage care at every stop.

Klamer said it was difficult getting patients and stakeholdersinvolved in the portal in its early stages, due to the presence ofabout 20 commercial, private health portals in Denmark. "It has been adifficult process because some of the commercial portals have beenthere for many years, and they are fairly good," said Klamer. But mostDanes are using Sundhed now, he said.

Patients' ability to see their own data and monitor providers'access to that data ultimately set the Sundhed portal apart from thecommercial models. "The possibility for the user to see his own data -his own medical profile, was a very good lift for the user end," saidKlamer.

Via the "e-journal" feature, Sundhed users see a log of doctor'sactivity within their care records each time they log in, which Klamersaid is "not often."

Using Digital Signature technology installed on their computers,doctors enter the terminal through the "professional account" mode. Inorder to access the portal via as a professional user, doctors mustfirst be authorized by Denmark's board of health.

Providers must type their reason for viewing a patient's datainto a text field on the user profile. Since its launch, there has beenonly one noteworthy instance of a doctor abusing his access to patientinformation, and he was reprimanded by the government as a result.

Patients using the portal can also schedule appointments andconfirm them via SMS messages, designate which organs to donate andedit their living will.

When asked if other, less IT-ready nations could adopt theSundhed model, Klamer said, "I think one of the reasons this works isit doesn't cost much for us to do it. It was cheap to develop the EPR.Our political system likes it because we are talking about a newdimension in the healthcare system where the patient himself knows moreabout his sickness, chronic diseases and lifestyle decisions. It's alsopopular because it can be used by the citizens as a service to bebetter active patients when they come into the healthcare system."

Klamer summarized the value of Sundhed in a personal credo. "Iused to say we need the right information about the right patient inthe right place at the right time. We can do that using the portal."