Latvia's E-Health System Holds No Old Records: Family Doctors Were Not Required to Digitise Patient Histories
Latvia's Digital Health Centre says doctors were never told to transcribe old paper records into the E-Health system. Older information, such as vaccination history, may exist only on paper.
Older medical data, such as a vaccine received decades ago, often cannot be found in Latvia's national electronic health system, E-Health (E-veselība). The issue sparked a social media debate. The Latvian Digital Health Centre told the news portal LA.LV that family doctors were not required to digitise patients' previously accumulated medical history when the system was introduced.
How the system was designed
Information in E-Health was meant to build up gradually as doctors created new electronic entries. Submission of different document types became mandatory at different times:
- e-prescriptions, e-sick leave certificates and imaging results: since 2018;
- vaccination data and laboratory test results: since 2024;
- hospital discharge summaries (epicrises): since March 2025.
A missing old vaccine in the system therefore does not mean no record ever existed. It may remain in paper files.
How long paper records are kept
Cabinet regulations require outpatient and inpatient medical records to be kept for 40 years after the last entry, or 15 years after the patient's death. Other documents have shorter periods; for example, radiological images are kept for 10 years.
What patients can do
When a patient registers with a new family doctor, the new doctor must request the previous doctor's records within three working days, and the previous doctor must hand them over within five working days. Under the Patients' Rights Law, people may access their medical documents and request extracts or copies. One copy is free, and the institution must provide it within three working days. No specific request form is required. If a medical institution has been closed, patients should look for its legal successor, or contact the Health Inspectorate or the relevant archive.
At a patient's request, a medical practitioner may add significant information to E-Health, such as allergies, chronic conditions or regularly used medication, but doctors are not obliged to transcribe an entire paper file. The centre stresses that E-Health is not a historical archive. Anyone with an important past diagnosis, allergy or surgery is advised to find out what documentation has been preserved by medical institutions.
