More “digital helpers” are to be used in care in the future. The federal cabinet approved a bill on Wednesday “for the digital modernization of care and nursing”. Human attention is the basis for good care, explained Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU). However, useful apps could help those in need of care to cope better with their everyday lives.

Improve their health According to Spahn, digital care applications (Dipas) can help to stabilize or improve one’s own state of health through exercises and training. The aim is to reduce the risk of falls, train the memory or improve communication between nursing staff and relatives. The care advice is also to be expanded to include digital elements.

At the same time, the government wants to create a new procedure for the possible reimbursement of care apps. The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices should be responsible for approval. For social long-term care insurance, the cabinet calculates up to 2025 for Dipas for 365. 000 People with overspending of good 130 Million Euros. This would stand in the way of “non-quantifiable relief”.

The Bundestag had already decided 2019 with the “Digital Supply Act” that people with statutory health insurance are entitled to digital health applications by prescription under certain conditions. However, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) warns of the high risks associated with health apps. Data protection activists are calling for a tightened approval procedure after security deficiencies were made public in the first approved applications.

More data protection planned Data protection and The cabinet now wants to strengthen the IT security of digital applications in this sensitive area. It plans a duty of confidentiality for manufacturers and a mandatory safety certificate. Insured persons should also be given the opportunity to enter data from such apps as well as prescription and dispensing information in their electronic patient record (EPR). Access to the EPR is currently still difficult. The Society for Computer Science (Gematik) should therefore support the health insurance companies. According to the draft, this help could “in particular consist of providing a reference implementation or parts of it in an open source license”.

The government wants to give telemedicine a helping hand. When arranging medical appointments in the practice, online services should also be agreed. The medical on-call service as well as medicine providers and midwives should also be able to offer telemedical activities. In the future, sick leave should generally be allowed “in the context of exclusive remote treatment”.

Gematik is given the task of providing “secure, economical, scalable access” to the telematics system that is adapted to the different needs of users To develop infrastructure (TI) as a “future connector”. So far, IT security has been considered inadequate here. In future, insured persons, service providers and payers should be able to use video conferences and a messaging service to exchange data and communicate in addition to e-mail. For authentication, special digital identities are provided by 2023 to.

More and more functions The emergency data on the electronic health card (eGK) should be “further developed into an electronic patient summary” together with information from the insured on the storage location of personal statements. The electronic medication plan will also be transferred to its own TI application. The eGK should no longer serve as a data storage device, but only as proof of insurance.

Declarations of organ donation can soon also be made via the insured person’s apps of the health insurance companies. A national e-health contact point is to be set up by the middle 2023 so that insured persons can also make their health data available to doctors in other EU countries “safely and translated”.

The government wants to introduce electronic regulations for the areas of home and out-of-hospital intensive care, sociotherapy, remedies and aids, narcotics and other prescription drugs. Corresponding institutions must therefore gradually join the TI. The cabinet wants to strengthen interoperability in the health care system, feed the national health portal with more data and thus put it on a more reliable basis.

The state should also carry out the data protection impact assessment for the use of TI components such as connectors and card readers take over. Doctors are said to have one-time around 730 million euros and around 548 million euros annually Euros are saved for adjustments. In addition, you do not have to appoint a data protection officer, which should reduce your costs by 427 million euros annually.

(mho)