Costa Rica's Unified Digital Health Record (EDUS) System: Best Practices, History, and Implementation
Peer Reviewed
Date issued
Jul 2023
Subject
Health;
Health Facility;
E-Health;
Health Care Service;
Electronic Health Record;
Labor Force;
Digital Transformation;
Health Care;
Health Care System;
Social Security;
Science and Technology;
Coronavirus;
Infrastructure Development
JEL code
O33 - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences • Diffusion Processes;
I11 - Analysis of Health Care Markets
Country
Costa Rica
Category
Learning Materials
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.
