With the Digital Agency Act (GDAG), the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) wants to expand the competencies of gematik. This is intended to accelerate digitization in the healthcare sector. When it comes to the goal – faster digitization – the industry agrees with the BMG. However, companies have considerable doubts that the path they have taken is the right one. Melanie Wendling, Managing Director of the Federal Association of Health IT – bvitg e. V., explains why this is the case in the “ÄrzteTag” podcast.
The law is “sufficiently vague,” Wendling complained during the interview. The industry association is particularly bothered by the wording that gematik can certify products, but can also develop them itself. It does not specify which products it can develop itself.
However, if the future digital agency were to offer applications on the market independently, this could lead to distortions in competition. “The state has not yet proven that it can do better when it comes to digitization,” says Wendling. It is questionable whether gematik, for example, would be able to create a better practice management system.
In the past, industry was often portrayed as the bad guy when something in the telematics infrastructure didn’t work immediately. But “digitalization does not cure the bad processes we have in the healthcare system,” stresses the bvitg managing director. The many gaps between the sectors are reflected in the complex digital applications.
In the podcast, Wendling describes how a specification for a new application of the telematics infrastructure is created: “There is no defined process,” she complains. gematik speaks to everyone and then develops a specification from that. Industry also gives its comments, but there is no transparency about whether these are received, noticed and what happens with them. In the end, someone is usually forgotten. Then the specification has to be changed, and that lengthens the process.
In the interview, Wendling also explains the industry’s expectations of the Competence Center for Interoperability, she describes which deficits the ePA will have in the beginning and how she hopes that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated in the next stage of the telematics infrastructure.
