National Health Insurance cards store four types of information: cardholder’s basic information, National Health Insurance information, medical service information and health administration information.

As for the National Health Insurance information, the session stores the most recent 6 visits records of the cardholder (including dates of visits, healthcare providers, and disease codes). For the medical service information, the session stores the history of up to 60 sets of the prescriptions (including treatments, drugs, and examinations) and allergy drugs. When a patient pays a visit to a doctor with a NHI card, the doctor can read the content stored on the card using his doctor authorization card to avoid repeat prescriptions and increase patient’s safety. However, due to limited storage space of the NHI card, prescriptions and examinations can only be stored in the form of codes instead of Chinese characters. But even so, healthcare providers can obtain clinical information for reference through their own health information by checking the fee schedule and drug formulary, enabling doctors to discuss previous medical records with patients and make a proper decision. On the other hand, the Bureau of National Health Insurance is working towards building a cloud database that patients may access through the Internet.

Since this year, a single prescription with more than 10 items of drugs and the healthcare providers whose average prescription with more than 5 items of drugs will be subject to scrutiny. For patients with chronic diseases frequently visiting different healthcare providers and receive similar medications, the Bureau will also conduct individual consultations with the patients to understand their actual medical needs and doctors will also be asked to check the prescription records of the patients to avoid prescribe drugs that the patients have already received from other healthcare providers. As a supplementary measure, the Bureau is considering a strict enforcement of cancelling reimbursement if doctors fail to check prescription records before prescribing drugs. Additionally, the current storage space on a NHI card is limited to 60 sets of prescriptions, leaving out much of a patient's previous prescription history. As a countermeasure, the Bureau is planning to build a complete patient prescription database for doctor reference. Repeat prescriptions attributable to the negligence of doctors will not be reimbursed. The patient prescription database is going to be established by collecting data from both medical expenditure applications and the information uploading from NHI cards.