Ministry of Economics launches new initiative to foster Digital Transformation in health care

Fri, 2017 / 07 / 21
With a position paper on the digitalization in health care, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie; BMWi) launches a new attempt to awake the German health care system from its digital deep slumber. This new initiative comes only month after the department issued a report attesting the health system in comparison to eleven other sectors both a significant backlog in terms of digitalization and an unfavorable prognosis for the upcoming years, resulting in tenth place outperforming only parts of the manufacturing sector. With a nine-point-plan the BMWi is now looking to take immediate actions to move forward with the Digital Transformation. Key aspects of the plans are:

  • financial support for German health care companies in research and development of digital solutions,

  • a streamlined access to reimbursement within the German health care system,

  • a more transparent definition of fixed reimbursement fees in the outpatient sector,

  • the setup of so called "experimental rooms" in which regulations can be temporarily and locally modified promoting the development and market access of innovative digital products,

  • the establishment of an innovation budget of 500 million Euros for university hospitals to support the build-up of a contemporary IT infrastructure,

  • a simplified access and a lawful combination of research data, clinical data and data from patient care for the development of innovative business models and to improve existing therapies and diagnostic procedures,

  • the overhaul of the numerous existing data protection regulations with the objective to set up a streamlined federal data protection act, taking into account current EU legislation,

  • the review of existing bans to remote treatment and prescription to promote the possibilities of telemedical applications plus

  • a simplified infrastructure to allow varios service providers to offer legally conform Electronic Health Records (EHR) by 2018.


Despite the welcomed initiative, whether or not a performance review in respect to the above mentioned action points is planned is unclear to this point in time.

The full report can be downloaded via the following link (in German): https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Publikationen/Wirtschaft/eckpunkte-digitalisierung-gesundheitswirtschaft.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=16 (14.07.2017)
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