Bulgaria mandates centralized electronic health records and launches citizen eHealth app

Bulgaria promulgated amendments to the Public Health Act on 8 October 2024 requiring that all medical activities, regardless of funding source, be recorded in each citizen's centralized electronic health record. The law also introduced an eHealth mobile application allowing citizens to access their records via QR code, with new identification options including electronic health cards and SMS passwords. Bulgaria had one of the weakest patient access frameworks in the EU, with fragmented records across public and private providers. The legislative mandate and mobile access tool represent the country's first concrete steps toward meeting EHDS primary use requirements for patient access under Dimension 3.