The Digitalisation Strategy – Making Health and Care Resilient and Future-proof

Digitalisation enables faster, universal access to high-quality care, simplified communication between providers, tangible relief for healthcare and long-term care staff, and beneficial use of innovative technologies and applications. Digitalisation thus helps improve the quality of the healthcare and long-term care provided.

Both healthcare and long-term care face considerable challenges, such as a shortage of skilled workers, rising costs, regional shortfalls in care provision and an ageing population that goes hand in hand with a growing number of people who are chronically sick and in need of long-term care. Digitalisation provides solutions for these and other major societal issues. For example, with more efficient people-centred processes and via targeted use of benefit-oriented technologies and applications, digitalisation can help mitigate the effects of a shortage of skilled healthcare and long-term care professionals. Medical and care staff can receive tangible relief as they go about their daily work, for example through practicable, secure ways of accessing relevant health and care data or the use of digital aids in routine activities and work. This also makes healthcare professions a more attractive employment choice.

With telemedicine approaches to healthcare, which enable the provision of care such as video consultations and remote patient monitoring (RPM) of disease independent of time and place, better access to high-quality healthcare can be ensured even in underserved or sparsely populated regions. Digital solutions can also help make healthcare and long-term care in Germany more sustainable and affordable, for example because digital documentation saves paper, money and time.

The Digitalisation Strategy builds on the goals and objectives agreed in the coalition agreement and, in conjunction with the Federal Government’s National Digitalisation Strategy, provides guidance for stakeholders by setting out a clearly-defined course of action and a vision for the digital transformation of Germany’s healthcare and long-term care system.

When developing the Digitalisation Strategy, the success factors of strategies implemented in other countries were taken into account. This is where important conclusions can be drawn for Germany, such as focusing on people in their roles as patients, people in need of long-term care, family members and service providers. Compared with other strategies, however, additional aspects were added. For example, the Digitalisation Strategy also looks at the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholder groups and refers to the regulatory framework in place.