European Commission "Digital Decade 2024: e-Government Benchmarking Report" - Türkiye’s Digital Health Success with Tiga

e-Government revolutionizes how we interact with governments, bringing many benefits to the public. By using technology to make public services more efficient, fast, accessible and transparent, it simplifies our lives. From online tax returns to digital vaccine certificates, these innovations are designed to make our interactions with the government more convenient and practical.  

Europe has been one of the pathfinders in this digital transformation toward e-Government with innovative solutions that streamline processes, improve efficiency and enhance citizen satisfaction. To drive e-Government innovation further, the European Commission regularly publishes the 'eGovernment Benchmark' study, providing valuable metrics, insights and best practices.   

The latest 'Digital Decade 2024: eGovernment Benchmark' report evaluates the progress of European governments in their digital transformation journey, focusing on 2022 and 2023. This benchmark also provides insights into broader digitalization trends over the past four years as a valuable tracking tool. This report is important for tracking continued e-Government improvements in European Union (EU) Member States, European Free Trade Association countries and the EU candidate countries, including Türkiye.  

This brings us to the heart of our success story. Thanks to the ease of use of Türkiye's e-Government application, the country has secured the 10th position with a score of 83, surpassing the EU average. Even more impressively, Türkiye fixed the 4th spot in the 'Health' category with a score of 90 and ranked first considering population size.   

To accurately comprehend Türkiye's 'Health' ranking value, adjusting rankings according to population size is essential. When we account for this, Türkiye stands out as the leading country in 'Health.' The first three countries in the rankings, Luxembourg (653,000), Malta (531,000) and Estonia (1,300,000), have populations that are considerably smaller than Türkiye's (85 million). To put it differently, we can say that the combined population of the first three countries is smaller than the number of patients treated by a city hospital in Türkiye in just one year! 

We at Tiga Healthcare Technologies are proud to be a vital and strategic partner of this achievement, collaborating with the Turkish Ministry of Health and the Turkish Medicines and Medical Devices Agency (TİTCK) on transformative national-scale projects like the Personal Health Record (PHR) System (e-Nabız), Central e-Prescription (Reçetem) and The Pharmaceutical Track and Trace System (İlaç Takip Sistemi-İTS) in Türkiye.   

What Are The eGovernment Benchmark Report Metrics?  

‘The eGovernment Benchmark’ is a comprehensive tool designed to provide a roadmap for digital transformation. Comparing countries across Europe highlights the latest e-Government technology trends and demonstrates areas where governments can level up. The evaluation of online public services is based on four key dimensions. Countries receive a final score ranging from 0 to 100. Here's a breakdown of these four dimensions, what they ask and what they measure:  

• User Centricity: What's the level of online public service provision? Are the services optimized for mobile devices? How effective are online support channels? So, it measures online availability, mobile friendliness and user support metrics.  

• Transparency: Do public institutions provide information about their service delivery processes? Are citizens informed about how their data is used and protected in digital services? Thus, it involves metrics about the transparency levels of service delivery, personal data and service design.   

• Key Enablers: What technological infrastructure supports online public services? This score was based on electronic identification (eID), electronic documents (eDocuments), pre-filled forms and digital posts, which are the options for digital communication.  

• Cross-Border Services: What is the accessibility of online public services for citizens from abroad? This evaluation again considers the metrics for online availability, user support, eID and eDocuments.  

It's time to examine Türkiye's position. The country's remarkable e-Government performance is underscored by a leading score of 83 among non-EU countries, also significantly exceeding the EU average of 76. Compared to other countries with similar populations, like Germany, which scored 66, Türkiye's achievement becomes even more impressive. Having increased its total score by over 11 points in the past four years, Türkiye's consistent progress demonstrates its remarkable digitalization actions. 

When we examine the four key dimensions, we discover a remarkable story in Türkiye. In terms of user-centricity, Türkiye is practically perfect, scoring nearly 100. Transparency has seen a 20-point increase in four years, reaching 82 and leaving the EU average of 67 behind. Key enablers also demonstrate a world-class level of performance with a score of 95.   

One key point to emphasize here is that its advanced healthcare digitalization is one of the most robust factors of Türkiye's e-Government success, encompassing all four dimensions. As Tiga Healthcare Technologies, we're proud to have contributed to this achievement through our innovative products! Now, let's discover the specifics.   

As a Leader in Health: Türkiye

For this report, the European Commission evaluates nine e-Government domains, named 'life events,' which are bundles of government services that regularly assist citizens at key life stages. Naturally, 'Health' is one of the most critical life event categories in this benchmark, with metrics mainly focused on electronic health records (EHR) and online accessibility of healthcare services.  

The Commission has consistently stressed the urgent need for digital transformation in healthcare. The increasing burden on healthcare systems, boosted by factors like aging populations and increased chronic diseases, combined with a shortage of healthcare professionals and disparities in access and quality of care, have made digitalization an immediate and critical necessity. While progress has been made globally, from increased usage of e-prescriptions to electronic health records, the benchmark showcases that there's still significant room for improvement in digital health services.  

The benchmark's ‘Health’ category focuses on citizens' access to essential healthcare services and information to reveal digitalization needs. The researchers conduct a specific eHealth Indicator Study by asking questions like these:   

• Is it possible to schedule appointments digitally?  

• Can citizens consult with physicians virtually?   

• Are electronic health records readily available to citizens?  

Then, national healthcare authorities fill out self-assessment surveys to provide valuable insights for the benchmarking report. The results are impressive, with Türkiye claiming 4th place among all participating countries, scoring 90 points. Still, the real triumph lies in the details. According to the population size factor, Türkiye emerges as the clear leader in the 'Health' category. The first three countries, Luxembourg, Malta and Estonia, have significantly smaller populations. In Türkiye, hospitals sometimes see more patients than the population of these countries!  

As Tiga, we take pride in our role in the successful digital transformation of Türkiye's healthcare system. We're delighted to contribute to a healthcare system that is setting a global model, given Türkiye's renowned e-Government success. It's an honor to play a role in delivering fast, effective and accessible healthcare services to Turkish citizens. It's important for us to explain the products that contributed most to this achievement.  

Our Impact  

At Tiga, we've been passionate about transforming healthcare through digital innovations for 17 years. Our focus has always been on putting patients first and making healthcare more accessible for all. Accordingly, we've touched countless lives and assisted Türkiye in achieving remarkable results. It's time to briefly examine our products that have propelled Türkiye to the leadership of e-Government and healthcare digitalization.  

Personal Health Record (PHR)  

The Personal Health Record (PHR) System (e-Nabız)  is an excellent system for managing electronic health records (EHR) and making them accessible to citizens. In fact, Türkiye's success in implementing such a powerful EHR system has positioned it as a global leader in e-Government and healthcare digitalization.   

PHR empowers citizens with 24/7 rapid and secure access to their EHRs, increasing patient engagement. The system consolidates real-time healthcare data from all private and public healthcare facilities on a secure platform. This way, it empowers patients and users to access medical histories, including diseases, diagnoses, prescriptions, lab test results, radiological images and reports, vaccination calendars and digital vaccination cards, allergies and more. As a sign of expanded patient engagement level, PHR allows patients to decide who can access their EHRs and for how long.   

Also, PHR goes beyond basic EHR management, offering drug reminders, a cardiovascular disease risk calculator and a smart assistant. The system also includes a platform for blood and organ donations. Thanks to these comprehensive features, PHR has successfully processed over 10 billion health records for over 74 million users and 125 million patients. Also, over 28,000 healthcare facilities and 30 systems are integrated into PHR, supporting more than 218,000 physicians.  

Central e-Prescription  

Our Central e-Prescription System (Reçetem) shows how to make an impact through electronic prescription transformation. It digitalizes prescribing processes with the involvement of all stakeholders in the ecosystem and manages the prescriptions on a national scale.   

Initially, this system's name was 'Renkli Reçete' (Narcotic Prescription System) and it only handled the prescription of narcotic and psychotropic drugs to identify irregularities on these drugs and prevent fraudulent activities. During the following phases, it was expanded to track the prescription processes of particular other drugs, such as those for blood diseases. Eventually, the system was extended to manage all prescriptions in the country, becoming the Central e-Prescription System.  

Central e-Prescription has successfully processed over 2 million prescriptions daily for 81 million patients; to date, it has managed a total of 1.5 billion prescriptions! This system connects a vast network of 246,000+ physicians, 29,000+ pharmacies and 51,000+ healthcare facilities with 40+ integrations working together to dispense over 9 million medication boxes daily.   

This system optimizes the prescribing journey, enabling real-time tracking of prescriptions and enhancing patient adherence. It reduces prescribing process risks with features like dosage calculation, simplified SIG code prescribing, allergy and drug-drug interaction checks, drug management guidelines and pharmacovigilance data.   

Operating on a national scale, it aids in enhancing patient safety and guarantees accurate medication information, clinical decision-support alerts and advanced treatment guidelines. Ultimately, it leads to accurate dispensing by stopping counterfeit prescriptions and drug misuse.  

DrugXafe - The Pharmaceutical Track & Trace System   

Ensuring a reliable pharmaceutical supply chain is crucial for patient and citizen safety. The Pharmaceutical Track & Trace System, branded as DrugXafe, is here to display the solution for ensuring safety. As the world's first end-to-end pharmaceutical tracking and tracing system, DrugXafe (used as İlaç Takip Sistemi since 2010 in Türkiye) has transformed the industry, positioning Türkiye as a leader in digitalization. In addition to Türkiye, the system is used in two other countries. 

DrugXafe supplies drug safety and prevents counterfeiting with serialization by using unique 2D Data Matrix codes to track and trace each single drug box in the pharmaceutical supply chain from production to the end-users. Additionally, its strong data management and rational drug use capacities result in a clean and transparent pharmaceutical supply chain. Recognizing this system's excellence, PwC named DrugXafe a 'Best Practice in the Pharma Industry' and the United Nations - WSIS granted Türkiye an e-Health champion award for DrugXafe's successful implementation.    

In addition, to empower citizens with digitalization, we developed the DrugXafe Mobile App. This app allows patients to effortlessly check the status of their drugs by scanning the 2D Data Matrix or manually entering drug identifiers. Patients can access essential information like expiration dates, recall notices, current drug prices, adverse reaction notifications, announcements and nearby pharmacies.      

In summary, Türkiye continues to be a shining star in e-Government and its prowess continues to impress, as evidenced by the European Commission's 'Digital Decade 2024: eGovernment Benchmark' report with concrete data. The most significant factor driving Türkiye's success is its remarkable progress in healthcare digitalization, particularly in EHR management, drug and prescription safety and patient engagement.

As Tiga, we're proud to have played a critical role in Türkiye's digital healthcare journey, empowering millions of citizens with innovative technologies like PHR (e-Nabız), Central e-Prescription (Reçetem) and DrugXafe (İlaç Takip Sistemi-İTS). Our contributions have helped improve patient outcomes, enhance healthcare efficiency and strengthen the healthcare system.  

Looking ahead, we're excited about the potential for even greater achievements in healthcare digitalization. With our innovative products and solutions, we are confident in our ability to create a strong global impact. We believe that our contributions will significantly advance the digitalization goals in healthcare, not only in Türkiye but also in Europe and the entire world.

Let's shape the future together, as always!