Costa Rica's Unified Digital Health Record (EDUS) System: Best Practices, History, and Implementation

The Unified Digital Health Record (EDUS) project is an initiative that Costa Rica launched in 2010 to organize in a single digitalized file the medical and social security information of people enrolled in the services of the Costa Rican Social Security System (CCSS). This case study explains what EDUS is, how it works and what its challenges and benefits have been. The document includes a list of best practices for the design, development and implementation of digital health records. It also discusses two recent EDUS episodes in Costa Rica: the management of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cyber-attacks that the country received in 2022, which paralyzed the EDUS service for two months.