Private doctors in Hong Kong will receive a government subsidy of HK$6,000 (US$772) by linking their clinical management systems to the official electronic health record platform and continuously uploading patient data for 12 months, as part of a scheme to promote more seamless care between public and private sectors.

Health authorities said on Thursday that the eHealth+ Connectivity Support Scheme hoped to build a complete health record for every resident, allowing doctors from both sectors to provide safer care by accessing essential patient information.

Principal Assistant Secretary for Health Erica Lam Bing-bing said the subsidy scheme aimed to encourage more doctors to adopt or upgrade to systems compatible with eHealth and get them to upload patients’ data to the citywide system upon authorisation.

“We expect a substantial increase in the number of doctors who can [upload data to] the eHealth system in the coming one or two years,” Lam said.

She said that a key challenge in the operation of the electronic health record sharing system, known simply as “eHealth” and launched in 2016, had been the limited contribution of records from the private sector.

While private practitioners account for 60 per cent of those accessing the platform, they have contributed less than 1 per cent of the data, according to official data released in March.