Mexico makes digital health records mandatory, but compliance and connectivity still lag

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In January 2026 a decree in Mexico's Official Gazette reformed the General Health Law, turning digital health from an optional upgrade into a matter of general public health. Public and private providers must now keep clinical information digitally, make their systems interoperable and follow cybersecurity and data protection rules. Records kept only on paper no longer count. Efraín Cornejo, the Ministry of Health's digital health director, says the plan is not one national database but shared standards that let separate systems talk to each other.

The law is now in force, and much of the country's records software has yet to meet it. A large share of electronic records still fail NOM-024-SSA3-2012, the technical standard that already governed clinical systems. The market is worth about US$2.86 billion as of 2024, the second-largest in Latin America, while public health spending sits at roughly 2.7% of GDP against an OECD average of 7.6%. Some groundwork exists: a credential platform launched in October 2025 holds more than 15 million professional licences, and every electronic prescription must now be checked against it. In August 2026 the Ministry of Health and IMSS agreed to work on record interoperability, starting at the Hospital of the Woman, with wider data exchange targeted for January 2027.

Universal digital records also assume universal internet, and in 2024 about 73.6% of households, or 28.8 million, had it, according to INEGI. Jesús Hernández of the Mexican HealthTech Association points to e-invoicing as the model: "What really drove it was making it mandatory."