Healthcare rights for children and adolescents in Norway
Children and adolescents have a number of rights related to health and care services.
Illustration: Christina Strehlow / Johnér
Summary care record ("kjernejournal" in Norwegian) is an online service that contains important information about your health. Both you as a citizen and healthcare professionals will have access to the information in this service. If you become acutely ill, healthcare professionals will have fast and secure access to the information contained in your Summary care record.
The Summary care record service is available in all hospitals in Norway and has been introduced across every municipality and county, but a few out-of-hours medical centres and medical clinics have not yet introduced the service.
Fast access to important information
If you are admitted to a hospital where you have not been treated before, your healthcare professional will be able to quickly look up your Summary care record and find important health information about you. This can save lives.
Who has a Summary care record?
All permanent residents in Norway have been given a Summary care record, with the exception of the very limited number of people who have opted out of the system.
Don't have a Norwegian identity number?
You can create your Summary care record yourself if you have a D-number but not a Norwegian identity number. The information in the record will then be automatically transferred to a new Summary care record when you are assigned a Norwegian identity number.
What is the difference between Patient records and Summary care record?
Summary care record collates important information about you and makes it available both to you and to healthcare professionals. Summary care record does not replace records held by your GP or hospitals, but acts as a supplementary health registry in addition to these.
On the other hand, Patient records ("Pasientjournal") is a service which gives you access to a copy of your original hospital record. You can gain access to this via helsenorge.no. Remember that your Patient records is designed to provide information for healthcare professionals, and is not aimed at ordinary citizens.
You can opt out of having a Summary care record, whereas you will always have a patient record if you received treatment at a hospital, for example.
Children also have a Summary care record
Children also automatically get their own Summary care record. Health professionals treating a child under the age of 16 will be able to see the child's Summary care record. When children reach the age of 16, they will be able to obtain digital access to their own Summary care record via helsenorge.no if they have a BankID.
Parental access
Parents with parental responsibility have a right to see their children's Summary care record and can obtain this access for children up to the age of 12 via helsenorge.no, with some limitations:
- If one or more of the parents are registered at the same address as the child, both parents will be able to obtain digital access to the child's Summary care record.
- If none of the parents are registered at the same address as the child, none of them will be able to obtain digital access to the child's Summary care record.
- Parents who do not want to do this digitally via Helsenorge, can request written access by filling out the form which you will find a link to at the bottom of this page. Note that the same conditions as above also apply to the form.
If you believe that there is an error in registered data, you must contact the National population registry directly to make changes.
Parents who cannot or do not wish to do this digitally via helsenorge.no can request written access by completing the form Skjema for innsyn i kjernejournal 0-12 år (Application for access to Summary care record, 0-12 years) and sending it to the Directorate of eHealth. You will find a link to this form in the article "Forms for amendment of Summary care record" (in Norwegian).
For children aged between 12 and 16, no digital solution for such access is currently available via helsenorge.no. Parents wishing to see the Summary care record of a child aged between 12 and 16 must ask the child's GP or other physician who is treating the child for a printout of the child's Summary care record.
Find out more about using the services available at helsenorge.no on behalf of children.
Report an error in appointment history
Parents cannot digitally report errors in their child's appointment history, but they do have the option to digitally block access to their child's appointment history.
Parents can report errors in their child's appointment history using a form which can be accessed via the link in the article "Forms for amendment of Summary care record" (in Norwegian).
Opt out of your child having a Summary care record
Until your child reaches the age of 16, parents can opt out of the Summary care record scheme for their children. Both parents or guardians must agree to opt out in this way, unless the child lives with only one parent. In the case of children under 12 years of age, this can be done digitally at helsenorge.no.
Parents who do not wish to do this digitally can use the form Skjema for reservasjon mot kjernejournal for ditt barn under 12 år (Form for opting out of the Summary care record scheme for a child under 12 years of age), for which you will find a link in the article "Forms for amendment of Summary care record" (in Norwegian).
In the case of children aged between 12 and 16, you must contact your child's GP or other healthcare professional who is responsible for treating your child, in order to opt out of the Summary care record scheme on behalf of your child.
Children are often more vulnerable to communication breakdowns in the health service. They can therefore benefit greatly from the Summary care record scheme if they frequently receive treatment from the health service.
Foster children
Foster parents cannot gain access to their foster child's Summary care record unless the child's GP agrees that such access is necessary. The child's GP can then print out a copy of the child's Summary care record.
What information does the Summary care record contain?
Summary care records collate information from multiple sources and make this information available to both yourself and healthcare professionals.
Own entries
You can help to improve your own Summary care record by entering information in your record. This will help to give healthcare professionals a more complete picture of you and your health. This information could include:
- Next of kin - people who you want healthcare professionals to contact if you fall ill.
- Special communication needs - information on challenges relating to vision, hearing, speech or language.
- Medical history - previous health conditions or diseases which healthcare professionals should be aware of.
Critical information
Critical information in the Summary care record is health information that could be vital for healthcare professionals to know in an emergency. This is information that could influence the type of examination, treatment or follow-up that is chosen by a hospital.
This information will usually be entered in consultation with you when you have a doctor's appointment or receive treatment. Critical information will not be added to your Summary care record until your doctor has registered it.
Examples of critical information include:
- Severe allergies or hypersensitivity reactions, such as allergy to penicillin, previous narcosis issues, etc.
- Implants, such as prostheses, pacemakers, etc.
- Important treatment that you are receiving, such as dialysis.
- Changes to treatment routines and decisions that deviate from the normal routine, such as blood transfusion, life-prolonging treatment, etc.
- Rare, severe conditions, such as haemophilia.
Information which is not recorded in the Summary care record:
- all previous diagnoses
- notes from your Patient records
- blood test results and other examination results
- your blood type
Vaccinations
Healthcare personnel can see your vaccination status in the Summary care record. When healthcare personnel open the page for vaccines in the Summary care record, information is fetched from the National Institute of Public Health's ("NIPH"/FHI) national vaccination register SYSVAK. The information about your vaccination status is not stored in the Summary care record itself.
In the log, you will be able to see when the information was viewed, and by whom.
Donor card
You can create a digital donor card in your Summary care record. You can also add one or two people who know whether you consent to being an organ donor. These could be family, friends, colleagues, your GP or neighbours, but they must be over 18 years of age.
More information about organ donation (in Norwegian)
Medicines
Your Summary care record will contain a summary of the medicines that have been dispensed to you via e-prescription or paper prescription by Norwegian pharmacies, in addition to nutrients and consumables. You will also see a list of your current prescriptions. Medicines you have purchased without a prescription, received from an out-of-hours medical centre, hospital or nursing home, or purchased abroad will not be shown.
When your Summary care record is created, the list will show your current e-prescriptions. Any prescription drugs dispensed by pharmacies before your Summary care record was created will not be displayed. As you collect drugs from pharmacies, these will also be added to your Summary care record. This also applies to paper and telephone prescriptions.
Your drug history summary will cover up to the past three years.
Appointment history
Information about your contacts with hospitals and the specialist health service will be added to your Summary care record. Your appointment history may also include appointments with contracting specialists, i.e. specialists with an agreement with the public health service, such as dermatologists or cardiovascular and lung specialists.
"Contact" means the time and place of any examinations and treatment received from the specialist health service, such as hospitals. Examples of contacts are outpatient appointments or admissions. This information will be entered in your Summary care record, so that healthcare professionals can obtain a complete picture of your health.
The information given in your appointment history will date back to the 1st of January 2008. It may take four weeks or more from your attending a hospital before information about your appointment appears in your Summary care record.
Log of Summary care record usage
All searches for information are logged and you can keep track of which healthcare professionals have opened your Summary care record.
The log provides a simple overview of the date, name, event, and the reason why your Summary care record was opened.
There will be a delay of one week before the name of the healthcare professional appears on Helsenorge.
Profile and settings
You can choose how your Summary care record is used by you and healthcare professionals.
To do this, you must go to the menu in the top right of the screen, where your name is displayed when you are logged in. In this menu, you can make the following choices:
Using healthcare services and schemes:
- Restrict access to your Summary care record via helsenorge.no. If you restrict access in this way, you will still have a Summary care record, but it will not be available via helsenorge.no.
- Opt out of having a Summary care record.
Sharing health data:
- Limit access to your entire Summary care record by healthcare professionals.
- Limit access to parts of your Summary care record by healthcare professionals. Here, you can choose to restrict access to:
- settings
- critical information
- prescriptions
- your own entries and contact persons
- appointment history in the specialist health service
You can also block access to your Summary care record by named healthcare professionals. To do this, you must complete and submit the form for blocking access to your Summary care record by named healthcare professionals, which you will find on this page (in Norwegian).