From eAU to ePrescription - the digital services of medical practices

We work with the Electronic Patient Record (ePA), the electronic certificate of incapacity for work (eAU), the eDoctor's letter and the ePrescription. We also use electronic appointments and video consultations. And, of course, many things are done via e-mail contact, including prescription orders.

The eAU has laid the foundation for other digital services. Without the eAU as a door opener for digitalization in the healthcare sector, I believe the introduction of the ePrescription would have been more chaotic. Unfortunately, some employers still have problems retrieving the ePrescription today. And many patients also ask for a printout.

Fortunately, the majority of patients I talk to about this have few worries. We also have a very high standard of security in Germany. A greater danger for patients than data protection is a poorly informed doctor.

A doctor who lacks important preliminary findings cannot help a patient in a targeted manner. And the patients themselves do not always know the names of their medication. Or they remember an antibiotic allergy, but no longer know which medication they are allergic to. Last week, for example, a patient came to me with a thrombosis and I wanted to give him a blood thinner. The patient swore that he had never taken such medication before. It was only because we have our own eFile at solimed that I was able to view his medication list and see that this was the case. This made it possible to avoid incorrect treatment. 

They are not obliged to do so, because that does not fit in with our claim to individual self-determination. But in terms of medicine, I say: yes, they should use it, because it improves the quality of treatment enormously. That's why I also advocate an ePA for everyone. Everyone should be sufficiently familiar with the internet, their smartphone or tablet. Otherwise there is a risk of disconnection from important aids in the healthcare system.

In my opinion, yes. I am not aware of any serious errors or other incidents to date. 

Apps and other digital health applications (DIGAs) can promote the healing and alleviation of symptoms - even if they are not yet widely established. In the case of back pain, for example, they help patients to treat themselves and reduce pain with "health training". In the case of sleep disorders, they can reduce the consumption of sleeping pills. Services such as electronic appointment scheduling also make life easier. Patients don't have to wait so long in the telephone queue and can get an appointment more quickly and unbureaucratically.

During the coronavirus pandemic, we noticed how poorly digitalization had been going up to that point. A lot of information was not available and we were often in the dark. I would like to see two things in the future: firstly, more user-friendliness. Many current solutions overwhelm patients as well as practices and clinics. They are cumbersome and time-consuming. It takes longer to create an e-prescription than a paper prescription, and that shouldn't be the case.
Secondly, when introducing new modules or technologies, processes should be examined more thoroughly and more attention paid to details. When the ePrescription was introduced, many individual points were not clarified. For example, it is not possible for nursing home residents to create an ePrescription without a QR code, although there are legal requirements that stipulate who I can send prescriptions or QR codes to. These problems were only clarified during operation after the launch - we had years to prepare.