It is finally due to arrive in 2025 - the electronic patient record (EPR) for all people with statutory health insurance in Germany. But more and more experts are sounding the alarm. Instead of a revolutionary improvement to the healthcare system, the ePA could turn out to be a dangerous digital experiment. And not just for patients, but also for the doctors and psychotherapists who are supposed to put this new technology into practice every day.
An unsafe "green shrivel banana"
At a congress of the independent medical profession in Berlin, Prof. Ulrich Kelber, former Federal Data Protection Commissioner, described the ePA as "insecure, untested software", which at best is just a "green shrivel banana". The ePA is equipped with outdated technical components and has considerable security gaps. Particularly explosive: every insured person would have to actively object to the introduction of the ePA if they did not want their health data to be stored. Conversely, this means that without a clear rejection of the system, the data of all patients will be stored automatically. A data protection nightmare.
The duty of confidentiality? It could be at risk!
Another problem is that medical confidentiality, which is a valuable asset in Germany, could be undermined by the ePA. Doctors and psychotherapists must ensure that their patients' data is only accessible within the strictest limits. However, the new regulation, under which a patient's entire medical profile can be viewed for up to three days simply by scanning their insurance card at the pharmacy or when taking an e-prescription, jeopardizes this confidentiality. Two million healthcare workers could access sensitive data without sufficient control being guaranteed. Who wants their illnesses to be rummaged through by unauthorized persons?
Profits instead of improvements in healthcare?
Politicians are selling the ePA as a ground-breaking project to improve medical care. However, many experts question whether it is really about improving healthcare - or whether the focus is on evaluating and selling medical data to large tech companies such as Meta, OpenAI or Google. Dr. Silke Lüder, specialist and Vice President of the Freie Ärzteschaft, accused politicians of using the project primarily as a lucrative source of data. The question remains: Whose interests are really being served here?
Digital patient file: Promising, but not yet fully developed
The security flaws, the threat of loss of confidentiality and the lack of control over personal health data make this ePA a dangerous gamble with citizens' rights. The idea that big tech companies, of all people, could use our health data for commercial purposes sends shivers down our spines. We can only hope that something will change here. Otherwise, the digital transformation could harm our healthcare system rather than improve it.
