A step towards the electronic EHIC

"A step towards the electronic European Health Insurance Card" 

The current phase of the NETC@RDS for e-EHIC ID project is aiming at achieving initial deployment of an on-line service for the “electronification” of the European Health Insurance Card (e-EHIC) in 16 EFTA/EU countries. The initial deployment project phase now extends implementations to enable healthcare access for European citizens who provide evidence of entitlement in any of the upcoming 260 Service Units (SU) and around 500 Service Points (SP) across the 16 participating countries (AT, BG, CZ, DE, FI, FR, GR, HU, IT,  LI, NL, NO, PL, RO, SL, SK) at the end of the project. 

More specifically, NETC@RDS enables the Health Practitioners to check foreign patients' entitlement to health care. It is based on an agreement, so-called the General Agreement, between Health Insurance Organisations (HIO) aiming to provide easier access to cross-border healthcare for citizens travelling abroad but inside the EEE/EU and Switzerland.

The service can be provided via an eye-readable EHIC, a national health insurance electronic card, or via certain national e-ID chip cards issued by the responsible government authorities of the participating partners. An on-line verification provides assurance to support acceptance procedures for both health insurances and health care providers. The NETC@RDS application is thus expected to improve administrative healthcare services across member states and mobility of European citizens to national healthcare system.