BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - After years of wrangling, the digitization of healthcare in Germany is set to gain more momentum with broad-based applications for all. To this end, Federal Minister Karl Lauterbach will present plans on Thursday (10:30 a.m.) for a new start for electronic patient records, which are hardly used as a voluntary offer. As announced by the SPD politician, they are to become mandatory for all at the end of 2024 - unless one explicitly rejects it. The changeover envisaged by the traffic light coalition is intended to bring a breakthrough for digital applications. E-prescriptions are also to make headway. In addition, more data analysis for research is to become possible.
Green Party health expert Janosch Dahmen told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur: "As in so many areas, Germany has missed out on digitization in the healthcare system for years." Yet it contributes to faster, more efficient and better care, he said. "The digital patient file can save lives because it provides doctors with all the important information about a patient immediately." It must therefore become the standard, he said. The fact that less than one percent of the population has an e-patient file so far is completely insufficient, he said. "Other countries are miles ahead of us."
Introduced as a voluntary offer in 2021, e-files are intended to store findings, X-rays and medication lists, for example, and thus also avoid unnecessary multiple examinations. So far, however, only a fraction of the 74 million people with statutory health insurance use the service. There are delays in the networking of practices, and disputes over data protection are smoldering over a number of issues. In the coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP therefore agreed to apply the "opt-out" principle - i.e., that everyone automatically gets an e-file and you have to actively object, instead of actively applying for an e-file as before.
Green Party expert Dahmen said it was good that the minister was now setting the pace. The objection solution is "a proportionate way" in view of the high benefit for care. He added that data protection and health protection should not be played off against each other. "Patients should be able to decide flexibly about the use of the record." For example, they could make only individual findings visible to certain doctors. In addition, the digital file should be as efficient and user-friendly as possible from the outset. "There is still room for improvement in this regard," Dahmen explained.
"For the patient or doctor, the patient file must be as easy to use as a search engine," said the Green politician. For everyday practice, it would be very cumbersome if initially only long documents could be uploaded. What is needed is a quick overview of patient information and a uniform and structured data format. FDP expert Christine Aschenberg-Dugnus said that the advantage of the e-file was not only that patients could gain insight into all findings. Other players in the healthcare system would also be able to get a picture of a patient's health status with just a few clicks.
The German government has already set a target for its plans in its broader digital strategy: by 2025, it wants to be measured by whether at least 80 percent of those with statutory health insurance have an e-patient file. There should also finally be momentum for electronic prescriptions, whose introduction on a larger scale continues to falter - in the only pilot region in Germany, Westphalia-Lippe, further steps were put on hold last fall for the time being.
Green Party expert Dahmen emphasized, "We need a national health data space in which data systematically converges in real time from decentralized sources in a uniform manner." He added that there is a need to invest in a digital infrastructure in public hands that combines data protection, IT security and practicability. Here, too, we need a big push. Half-baked solutions could cost patients and doctors acceptance - and ultimately lives.
Lauterbach is also concerned with opening up more opportunities for research. The systematic evaluation of a large amount of digital data can decisively accelerate findings. A role model for this is Israel, which began digitization more than 25 years ago./sam/DP/zb
