Doctors should prescribe Apps
Wasting no more rubs, the doctor soon just tablets or crutches, but also mobile applications for Smartphones, Smartwatches or Tablets? Exactly the provides a design for a new digitisation law of Federal Minister of health, Jens Spahn. The cost should be covered by health insurance. “Patients should be able to rely on meaningful digital applications – such as Apps or diagnostic Tools in the supply,” wrote the CDU-politician on Twitter.
Are meant health Apps as digital diaries for diabetics or Apps for people with high blood pressure. Spahn also wants to develop further digital services. Thus, patients should be able to in the future, easier to find doctor’s offices that also offer video office hours. “The Patient of tomorrow will still need a doctor,” says Spahn. “But he will not take a doctor more seriously, working only on index cards.”
The assumption of costs should only apply to applications that have been tested by the Federal Institute for drugs and medical devices (BfArM) on security, privacy, transparency and user-friendliness, reported the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. Therefore, the manufacturer should offer the App for a year, and the prize itself may determine. After that, you would have to prove that the application will improve the supply. Only then you should be able to with health insurance companies over the cost of acquisition to negotiate.
Fee reduction for “Analog”-Doctors?
The electronic patient file will be the draft, extensive, and also Vaccination card, mother’s passport, or Dental bonus booklet cover. In an already adopted law stipulates that the funds must offer their Insured at the latest from 2021 an electronic patient file, to which you can with a Smartphone or Tablet can access.
Doctors who are not participating in the digital patient care, threaten, from March 2020 to fee cuts of between 2.5 percent, according to the Ministry of health. The draft is now in the departmental vote.
Not all Doctors are enthusiastic about Spahns digitisation plans. At the beginning of the week, doctors warned in an open letter to Spahn, patient data were not adequately protected against hacker attacks.
“It can’t be that the certified technicians install the equipment and some protective systems are disabled for the practice, against hacker attacks, in order for the TI to work smoothly,” said Bernhard Salomon IG Med German doctors ‘ Union, and requested, to process patient data only in the so-called Kiosk-mode, as it is usual in France. So, without telematics, or the exchange of sensitive medical data in an insecure network.
