Digital Health: E-prescription now also for the Federal Police

Since January 2026, around 44,000 federal police officers have also been connected to the e-prescription. They can also receive their prescriptions for prescription-only medicines as e-prescriptions via the telematics infrastructure (TI) – the health data infrastructure.

Since April 2025, federal police beneficiaries have already had access to an electronic health card (elektronische Gesundheitskarte, eGK) and patient master data management (Versichertenstammdatenmanagement, VSDM) – also TI applications.

Gematik also announced that it has expanded its e-prescription app. In the selection of insurance type on iOS and Android, the option "Other insurance" is now available. This is intended to be open to other groups of federal or state institutions in the future, provided their cost carriers or health insurance are connected to the TI. Furthermore, the app also allows an entry in the organ donor register to be made. Since 2021, over a million people have downloaded the e-prescription app from the Play Store, and ratings have also improved compared to the launch of the e-prescription. Users can also participate in a survey for feedback and suggestions for improvement from within the e-prescription app.

Without special regulations

The Federal Police stated in response to an inquiry from heise online that the eGK and e-prescription were implemented without special regulations to avoid deviations from established procedures. "In implementing the other points you requested, ePA and eAU, we decided on a step-by-step approach due to the complexity and the fact that we are the first other cost carrier to address this issue," the Federal Police said.

Previous experience has shown "that the lack of consistency in the existing regulations concerning other cost carriers and the resulting surprises have so far made long-term planning impossible." The Federal Police are working at full speed to "create the necessary prerequisites analogous to those for statutory insured persons."

The Bundeswehr is currently working on the implementation of the electronic patient record (ePABw). In the summer of 2025, CompuGroup Medical (CGM) won a major tender for the digitalization of the Bundeswehr's medical service. According to BWI, the doctor and dentist information systems used in this process are fundamentally capable of populating Gematik-compliant ePA data. A separate contract for the ePABw – the equivalent of the "ePA for all" – is to be awarded, which will give the Bundeswehr a digital patient record comparable to that of statutory insured persons in the future.

(mack)