CAPTION: Karl Lauterbach (SPD), Federal Minister of Health. (picture alliance / dpa)
Germany's Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is urging more speed in the roll out of digital applications in the healthcare sector, but also sees a need for improvements. "The wheel should not be reinvented now," the member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) said at the start of a consultation process with numerous stakeholders in Berlin on Wednesday. "But I think we need to readjust in some areas while we accelerate." For example, he warned against playing off data protection against the use of digitalization. Often, he said, it is errors in the architecture of applications that lead to data protection problems.
Lauterbach emphasized that it is not just about more transparency and efficiency. "Rather, we also want to use digitalization to enable a form of medicine that has not yet existed, in other words, better quality." He said the international role model for this is Israel, which he plans to see for himself during a trip next week. The coronavirus pandemic has given impetus to services such as video consultations, which now need to be consolidated and further developed, Lauterbach explained. For many, the government's warning app was also their first contact with digitalization in the healthcare system.
The core digital application is electronic patient records, around which many things can be built, Lauterbach said. After much wrangling, they were launched in 2021 as a voluntary offer for the 73 million people with statutory health insurance and are to be given an increasing number of functions. The governing coalition is aiming for the "opt out" principle to come for the use of the records - meaning that people have to actively object and not actively consent. Several digital projects, such as electronic prescriptions, have recently been delayed.
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