adesso Blog

The German government passed a bill to increase the pace of digitalisation in the health care system on 9 August 2023. The bill set outs the opt-out procedure for the electronic patient record and e-prescription (eRezept). In this blog post, I will describe the situation as it now stands along with the related challenges in this area.

Statutory health insurance companies in Germany have had to offer their policyholders their personal electronic patient record (EPR) since 1 January 2021. So far, only a little more than 470,000 electronic patient records have been created, despite the potential of about 83 million users. In my blog post, I’ll explain why this is the case, address the challenges private health insurance companies face and show how the situation can change.

Moving house might mean you have to change your doctor. But doctors need information about their new patients. Does that mean you have to arduously collect documents such as doctor’s letters, X-rays and hospital discharge reports? Is that particular doctor still practicing? Or will you have to go through all of the examinations all over again – possibly at great expense? Isn’t there a digital solution for medical records here?