Digital Health

The German healthcare system is facing major challenges: a shortage of skilled workers, underfunding, rising demand for care and overworked employees call for new, innovative solutions. Digital technologies can make an important contribution here. In this article, we highlight key trends in digital health that can drive the digitalisation of the healthcare system.

The various challenges in the healthcare sector are enormous in themselves, but in some cases they also reinforce each other. For example, the shortage of skilled workers is compounded by an increasingly ageing society with rising demand for care. At the same time, financial resources are becoming scarcer and the high workload is not making the various professions in the healthcare sector any more attractive. As a result, the shortage of skilled workers is becoming even more acute.

Digital health as a solution

The digital transformation of an industry is not just about converting analogue processes into digital ones. Rather, digital technologies offer completely new possibilities that did not exist in the purely analogue world. They have the potential to optimise workflows, use resources more efficiently and, at the same time, improve the quality of care. They enable a shift from reactive to preventive medicine and create new, less personnel- and cost-intensive ways of providing patient care and involvement. This is not about replacing human labour, but rather about complementing and supporting it in a meaningful way with digital tools and processes.

Digital technologies thus contribute directly and indirectly to solving current challenges. For example, they can be used directly to reduce workloads. This conserves resources and indirectly makes medical professions more attractive again.

How digital technologies support doctors and patients

Apps on prescription

Since 2019, certain apps, primarily for smartphones and tablets, but also for laptops and PCs, can be prescribed by doctors. The costs for these ‘digital health applications’ (DiGA) are then covered by health insurance companies. These ‘apps on prescription’ support, for example, the treatment of chronic diseases, mental disorders or metabolic diseases. They can guide therapeutic exercises, document symptoms and monitor the course of treatment.

This not only reduces the workload for medical staff, but also enables more continuous care for patients between doctor's visits. At the same time, they enable patients to actively participate in their recovery. However, this also requires a certain degree of personal responsibility on the part of patients and a willingness on the part of doctors to work with these applications.

The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) maintains a public list of all registered health apps: DiGA directory.

Digital patient empowerment

Health apps are part of the basic idea of active patient participation in the treatment process, known as ‘digital patient empowerment’ or DPE for short. At the heart of this is the electronic patient record (ePA), which documents the patient's medical treatment history in its entirety: prescriptions, doctor's letters, laboratory values, X-rays, CT scans, medication and even personal data, for example from health trackers and patient notes, provide a holistic picture of the patient's state of health.

Patient participation includes understandable information about diagnosis and treatment options from the doctor, but also documentation of the course of the illness by the patient. Additional sources of information (e.g. online portals) can be helpful here. The aim of DPE is to put people back at the centre and make them managers of their own health. In practice, however, this can only succeed if the patients concerned are able to take on this active role. They must also be willing to do so. If both conditions are met, informed and responsible patients can contribute to a significant reduction in the burden on the healthcare system.

Wearable devices

Digital devices such as smartwatches, fitness wristbands and other wearable sensors can be used in particular to monitor chronic diseases. Modern wearable devices no longer just measure physical activity, but can also record heart rate, blood oxygen saturation and even ECG data.

This data can be used for more accurate diagnosis, but also for long-term monitoring or therapy planning. This gives medical staff a comprehensive picture of the patient's state of health without increasing the amount of care required.

Patients can also benefit from this. For example, diabetics can monitor their blood sugar levels with a sensor attached to their skin and access the data via a smartphone app. If the values are too high or too low, an alarm is automatically triggered around the clock. The treating physicians can use the glucose value history to optimise the therapy.

Remote patient monitoring

Remote patient monitoring is a particularly promising approach to relieving the burden on the healthcare system. It combines various technologies such as sensor technology, telematics infrastructure and digital communication platforms to enable effective remote monitoring of health conditions outside clinics and doctors' surgeries.

Remote patient monitoring is particularly valuable for the treatment of chronic diseases, for older people with limited mobility and as an additional service in rural areas. The basic idea is to detect deteriorations in health at an early stage and to treat them with targeted measures in such a way that unnecessary hospital stays can be avoided.

Outlook: Digital health opens up new perspectives

Although the digital transformation of healthcare is still in its infancy, it already shows promising prospects for overcoming current challenges. The developments presented – from prescription apps to digital patient empowerment and wearable devices to remote monitoring – are important building blocks for a sustainable healthcare system.

The success of this transformation will depend largely on the extent to which digital innovations can be integrated into existing care structures and both medical staff and patients can be brought along on this journey. It will be crucial that digitalisation is not seen as an end in itself, but as a tool for improving healthcare while simultaneously relieving the burden on the system.

Text: Falk Hedemann