Health Record & Co: Warken Promises Operational Stability and Reliability

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„In times of demographic change, scarce resources, and in parts excessive bureaucracy, we are more reliant than ever on the opportunities of digitalization,“ emphasized Federal Health Minister Nina Warken on the occasion of the Digital Association Bitkom's anniversary at this year's Digital Health Conference.

Warken described the electronic patient record as a „gamechanger,“ which all statutory health insurance patients now have – unless they have objected. „It is the central hub of good, cross-sectoral, and data-based care,“ Warken is sure. The benefits of digitalization must help doctors and pharmacists, as well as insured persons. However, the prerequisite for this is that the services are reliably available. Just on Tuesday, there was again an outage of the electronic patient record.

„Digitalization, as we all know, can only fully unfold its advantages if the digital services are reliably available,“ Warken admitted. Digitalization should be a relief and not a burden. Regarding planned legislative projects, Warken also addressed the Medical Register Act, which is intended to facilitate the collection and linking of register data.

„Digital Sovereignty“

Warken sees „enormous potential“ in the European Health Data Space (EHDS), into which data from the Health Research Data Center is to flow – naturally „in the interest of patients, service providers, researchers, innovators, regulatory authorities“. In addition, data on prescriptions, for example, is to be made available at the EU level. The guiding principle is therefore a „decentralized, networked, European-connectable health data ecosystem that truly enables innovations and thus strengthens our digital sovereignty in Germany and Europe,“ Warken explained, repeatedly referring to the EHDS as a building block for digital sovereignty.

Health Data: A Treasure for Research and Innovation

For the connection to the EHDS at the national level, the Health Research Data Center was opened in October, although there are still unclearities regarding the security concept. According to Warken, the opening is a „real milestone for the health data infrastructure, for digitalization in Germany,“ Warken is sure.

„We have now stored the available data of over 70 million statutory health insurance patients in the Health Research Data Center. They are a great treasure for our research, for development, and for innovation,“ said Warken. The data treasure is unique worldwide, as former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach already said at the last DHC. The first applications for access to the data have already been received, for example from Sanofi, as a representative said in a panel discussion. However, it could still take some time until the aggregated data is released.

„Upholding Data Protection Truly High“

This makes Germany internationally competitive. At this point, it has also been possible „not to always just talk and discuss data security and data protection and what is not possible, but we have ensured here that we truly uphold data security and data protection, while at the same time enabling data use, truly understanding a dataset as a data treasure, and thus have taken a big step and also created a kind of rethinking,“ said Warken.

AI Real-World Labs

EU data will also be used for European innovations to develop and train AI models. AI real-world labs are intended to help start-ups and small companies meet regulatory requirements in the future. According to Warken, all of this is important to strengthen Germany as a location for innovation and business. „There is only potential for real innovations made in Germany if we provide high-quality data for research and development“. The health industry and „especially the digital health industry“ are essential pillars of Germany as a location.

(mack)