Germany suspends e-health card project
Thursday 28 January 2010 at 11:09 :: #278
The roll-out of Germany’s national e-health smart card has been put on hold, with a review to be carried out of security and confidentiality. The project had been hailed as the most extensive e-health communication project in the world.
Germany’s new health minister, Philipp Rösler, has decided to suspend the introduction of the planned electronic health card system.
The national ehealth project is one of the largest in Europe and intended to eventually provide every German citizen with an electronic card carrying their health data, medical history, prescriptions, and insurance status (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #09-18 and #09-19).
In the first phases, the e-health card had been planned to be used mostly to simplify health insurance transactions and claims, providing proof of eligibility. In its later phases medical data and prescription information would be added to the card.
The late-running project was originally to be launched in January 2006 but has yet to progress beyond pilots in a handful of Germany’s states. In the original project, from January 2006 all 80million customers of Germany’s health insurance companies, through which Germans access state health care, were supposed to be using the card whenever they saw a doctor, attended a clinic, or bought drugs.The card is still intended to replace the present membership cards of the health insurance companies and is supposed to make about 700 million handwritten prescriptions redundant.
The project is so far estimated to have cost the German government and health insurers a total of EUR 1.7billion. According to sources, project management introduction was "far more difficult than expected, because data protection experts were concerned that patients' privacy may be jeopardized and that unauthorized people could gain access to data online or on the cards". Doctors and other healthcare providers were opposed to buying specialist technical equipment, and some thought the card impractical.
The new German government reportedly decided to review the plans in the face of sustained criticisms from doctors and experts on data safety about the security of data and the feasibility of the technology.
The new health minister said smart cards will continue to be issued in specified trial areas but will only contain basic patient data, insurance status, a photograph. A small set of emergency health data will only be included if the patient has agreed to have it added to the card.