Non-prescription medicines are not necessarily the solution for shortening lines at doctors' offices. Over the past few months, electronic signatures specialist Comsign Ltd. has been installing at Clalit Health Services, Maccabi Healthcare Services, and Meuhedet Health Services a system that enables doctors to sign prescriptions via the computer. The direct result is that patients do not have go to the doctor's office, or to a nurse, or even obtain a fax to obtain a prescription.
"We'll only go to the doctor when we're sick," Comsign CEO Zeev Shetach told "Globes". He believes that 70% of medical prescriptions are for chronic illnesses. It is necessary to renew prescriptions every three months, which happens almost automatically.
Unless there is a special problem, Comsign's method renews a prescription automatically, or after approval by a doctor on the health fund's central computer. The prescription is sent to pharmacies, where the product can be purchased without a single piece of paper.
"If 70% of prescription renewals are made over the phone or automatically without waiting in line, this will save 30 minutes a day per patient. We calculated that it will save the people of Israel NIS 5 billion a year in lost work time, getting sick, and cases of missing the doctor and not taking our medicines," said Shetach.
He says that another advantage is that "electronic signatures, in contrast to a prescription, are almost impossible to forge."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 7, 2011
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