By the end of 2020, according to plans of the federal government 90 percent of the 375 Health authorities in Germany use the “Surveillance Outbreak Response Management and Analysis System” (Sormas), which the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig developed to combat Ebola and last year added a Sars-Cov-2-specific module. With 111 from 375 of the authorities, it was only around two thirds at the turn of the year.

This was announced by the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Health, Thomas Gebhart (CDU), in response to a request from the health policy spokeswoman for the Greens in the Bundestag, Maria Klein-Schmeink, With. Sormas is therefore in about 33 percent of the health authorities initially only “set up and operational”. All these institutions are to 31. December but was at least able to use the German electronic reporting and information system for infection protection (Demis).

Sormas is supposed to help, for example with the new Identify coronavirus infected people more quickly and inform all health facilities involved across county borders in real time. The tracking of contacts and the documentation of symptoms is simplified via the system that can be used via mobile app and the web. The software is open source and can be used free of charge. It meets the criteria of the “Global Goods Maturity Matrix for Digital Health Software” benchmark, so it is rated as good in points such as its ability to be integrated into a broad user and programmer community and data security.

Contact tracing too slow Observers consider it problematic that the vast majority of the offices of the solution are still giving the cold shoulder. If many of the ever more stringent corona measures were justified by the fact that chains of infection could hardly or no longer be traced.

“With the current infection figures, we can use Stone Age methods such as manual recording or typing Excel spreadsheets can no longer be used to track contacts, “emphasizes Klein-Schmeink. “All health departments must now be connected to Sormas as quickly as possible. Even if that means a show of strength.”

The FDP member of the Bundestag Hagen Reinhold called it a “disaster” that most health authorities “in the Corona -Crisis continues to only communicated by fax and scraps of paper “. This programmed the breakdown of contact tracing in many federal states. At present, data and findings are still being scanned by hand, compared twice, and addresses and telephone numbers are typed in. The information must be “exchanged quickly, digitally and in compliance with data protection regulations”.

Country matter The Federal Ministry of Health referred to the Funke media group that the “responsibility for equipping the health offices and thus the decision on the use of digital aids lies with the federal states and the health offices themselves”. The federal government can only act supportively in this context. According to the reports, many authorities had their own isolated solutions developed as early as the spring and summer, but they are not networked with one another.

The federal and state governments agreed on a “Pact for the Public Health Service” in September. They wanted to create “interoperability across all levels” and accelerate reporting. The respective health authorities are responsible for the operation of Sormas; they also decide on access to the stored data. The system is hosted on a separate virtual server for each office. The HZI has not yet submitted an official data protection impact assessment.

(olb)