The move comes after the Ministry of Health’s Decision No 2153/QĐ-BYT  was issued on May 25.

The decision is designed to promulgate regulations on establishing, using and managing health identification for each citizen.

Under the decision, health facilities would use the health identification to link people's health status with electronic health records and other health-information soft wares.

The data set of health identification includes social insurance code, full name, date of birth, gender, province/district/commune code where the citizen registers the birth; and health insurance code (if the citizen has participated in health insurance).

Health identification will have basic characteristics such as always being ready for health facilities to query and use; capable of identifying an individual's identity; may be used in conjunction with other information to generate codes that link health records across different information systems; as well as being able to create links and check the validity of the identification.

The Viet Nam Social Insurance will co-operate with the health ministry in issuing and managing the social insurance codes of each user to ensure information safety for the users.

At the same time, the social insurance agency is responsible for providing full information of social insurance codes and relevant information of the users that serve medical examination and treatment.

Health facilities are assigned to manage the patient's health identification to ensure privacy, safety and confidentiality of information./.