Electronic patient records to launch in Germany from end of April
Starting April 29th, the electronic patient record (
Elektronische Patientenakte
or ePA) will be available throughout Germany.
From October, it will be mandated that all doctor's offices and clinics support it.
What is the electronic patient record?
Put simply, the ePA is just collecting patients' health records online in a database where medical offices across Germany can share and access them as needed - as opposed to having records only on paper or in private systems at various clinics which would need to fax or mail them to other clinics on request.
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Outgoing Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has moved to launch the ePA in an effort to streamline healthcare in Germany and improve digitalisation. The ePA system is being set up by the digital agency Gematik.
For patients and doctors alike, digital records are expected to make healthcare more effective and easier to navigate.
For patients, medical information - such as records of treatments and operations, X-rays and prescriptions - will all be viewable in an online portal. But perhaps more importantly, doctors can immediately see a patient's medical history including useful information on their recent treatments and medications they've been taken.
This saves clinics from needing to request documents from other medical facilities - a process that is still often done via fax.
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Why Germany is still hanging on to the fax machine
Especially in emergencies, doctors being able to quickly view a patient's medical history can dramatically improve treatment and medical outcomes.
A selection of health insurance cards. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Jens Kalaene
A haphazard rollout
The ePA's launch was planned for February of this year, but has been pushed back due to technical issues. In the meantime, it was
tested for three months
in around 300 participating practices in Hamburg, Franconia and North Rhine-Westphalia and is now thought to be ready for a national roll-out.
In fact e-files for medical records were introduced as early as 2021 as an optional offer, but relatively few people opted to have their records saved digitally. This may have been due to a lack of awareness about the scheme.
Going forward, the ePA is to be implemented automatically with an opt-out system instead. Germany's Health Ministry hopes that around 80 percent of patients in the country will participate.
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What do I need to do?
The beauty of the ePA being rolled-out on an opt-out basis is that you don't need to do anything to make it work - assuming you're on board with your medical records being kept in the digital system.
According to the Ministry of Health, the data is to be encrypted and stored on secure servers. So only medical professionals involved with your care should be able to access your records. Reportedly, digital specialists have worked to identify security gaps in the model, and fix those problems in recent weeks.
If, however, you don't want your records stored digitally in the ePA you can opt-out.
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Under the framework of the ePA, health insurance companies are required to inform their members about how they can object. In most cases, this was done by mail around the beginning of this year.
Insurance companies will have online and/or paper forms with which you can notify them to remove your consent for being added to the ePA. You will also be able to object retrospectively, in which case the health insurance company must then delete all of your data in the electronic file.
READ ALSO:
Everything that changes in Germany in April 2025
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