The digitization of the healthcare system is being driven forward with great vigor in both Germany and Switzerland. Digital signatures are a keystone in this process.
Other countries are showing how it can work. Already today, millions could be saved with a well thought-out concept.
The digitization of the healthcare system offers a huge potential for savings
Be it prescriptions, declarations of incapacity for work, or agreements with laboratories and suppliers: A doctor’s everyday life is characterized by signatures. In most cases today, this is still done on paper – a process that costs millions of euros every year. Unnecessarily, because: Alternatives have long been available on the free market.
Every document signed on paper generates additional effort and costs for printing and delivery. It is not uncommon for patients to come to the practice just to pick up their prescription, a huge waste of time on a social scale.
Here it becomes clear how important signatures are as an interface. If the signature, and thus also the issuing of prescriptions, etc., were to be done completely digitally, millions could be saved in one fell swoop.
The technology is already available and is already being used successfully, albeit mostly in pilot projects such as the Health Info Network (HIN) in Switzerland. It enables doctors to issue electronic prescriptions. When a patient goes to the pharmacy, the status of the prescription is automatically updated to prevent it from being filled multiple times.
Initial results indicate that e-prescriptions make everyday life easier and save a lot of time for doctors, patients and pharmacists alike.
Improvements are still necessary
In other countries such as Finland, Sweden or Portugal, the e-prescription has long been in use and is constantly being expanded. In some cases, electronically issued prescriptions can already be redeemed across national borders.
The situation in Germany is more precarious. Although the introduction of the e-prescription is firmly planned here, implementation has so far failed, which is also due to the way it is being handled.
Instead of planning a system “for all” with all stakeholders or trusting in the innovative power of the free market, attempts are instead being made to order the digital revolutioni “from above”.
The fact that this often does not work in practice and sometimes produces bizarre results is illustrated by the example of the electronic declaration of incapacity to work (eAU). Because the system is only optimized for the exchange between doctors and health insurers, employers have to ask treating doctors about eAUs directly. For both sides, this is an extremely inefficient process that could easily be improved with a better integrated solution.
Secure digital signatures as a game changer
This example clearly shows that the signature is the decisive interface in process digitization. The key here is to develop solutions that include all stakeholders. Other countries and not least the project that HIN has started in cooperation with Certifaction show that it is possible.
A particular challenge is data protection, after all, health data is among the most sensitive information of all. This is exactly the point where many systems freely available on the market fail, because the transmission usually happens unencrypted. Data is not secured until it is stored – too late if it is intercepted beforehand.
Secure eSignatures that rely on local data processing and encrypted transmission (E2EE) are therefore a basic requirement. To “mandate” the creation of such systems by law is risky and inefficient, because the free market has long since reacted. Companies like Certifaction already offer secure digital signatures that could be integrated into new systems without much trouble, as the HIN example impressively demonstrates.
The CEO of Certifaction, Benoît Henry, recently wrote an article for the healthcare magazine Mednic on the topic of eSignatures in the healthcare system (in German).
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