The Federal Ministry of Health encour-ages collaboration with the US in the area of digitalisation

The meetings provided a platform to continue the exchange that began at the Data for Health Conference in 2023 in Berlin. At the German American Conference, the participants developed specific approaches for research-ers working with international health data, with the aim of improving individual treatments.

Minister Lauterbach also met the US National Coordinator for Health IT to exchange ideas on the Electronic Patient Record as well as on digital net-working between hospitals and doctors. To improve diagnostics and pro-vide individually tailored therapies, it is imperative that patients’ medical data are always complete and up to date.

The ways in which AI is already used today to improve healthcare were demonstrated during Karl Lauterbach’s visit to the speech recognition software company Nuance in Burlington. When taking the medical history, AI takes care of the paperwork – which means there is more time for doc-tor-patient consultation.

In addition, the Minister gave a speech at Harvard University, in which he discussed from a German perspective the topics of the UN High-Level Meetings on Health, namely pandemic control, global health and the fight against tuberculosis.