KHZG(Kranken-Haus-Zukunfts-Gesetz) in simple term, Future Hospital Act. An initiative by German Government to pump 4.3 billion euros into German Healthcare to bring digitization across the system. A need that pressurized during pandemic like COVID.
Biggest beneficiary of KHZG is digital Healthcare. A dream proposal by government to IT industry. But let’s dig into the reality, whether KHZG really made any significance to the healthcare systems. Do you have any idea who were beneficiaries of this.
Historical Background
With roots dating back to Otto von Bismarck's social legislation in the 1880s, Germany has the world's oldest national social health insurance system. After 1932, Germany's modern healthcare system was introduced. From then until 1995, many laws were introduced to establish insurance provisions.
Although we entered the digital era in the 2000s, many countries across the globe did not recognize its significance. The digitization of healthcare was left to the vendors, not realizing the significant gap that existed. However, COVID reminded us that digitization is necessary.
In early 2020, when COVID spread and killed millions, it became clear that KHZG must be implemented as soon as possible, but we were too late for this pandemic.
A bit of Technical
As we dig deeper into KHZG, we discover that many aspects are influenced by pandemics and their management, especially when we recognize the importance of using the latest technologies in emergency rooms and digital patient portals. Let us take a closer look at the core topics of KHZG.
Digital Patient Management
Digital Patient portals
Remote Monitoring telemedicine applications
Telematik Infrastructure(Telematikinfrastruktur)
ePA(Electronic Patient Record | elektronische Patientenakte)
KIM(Communication in Medicine, Kommunikation im Medizinwesen)
eMP(Electronic medication plan | elektronischer Medikationsplan))
NFDM(Emergency data management | Notfalldatenmanagement)
VSDM ( Insurance personal data management | Versichertenstammdatenmanagement)
eAU (Electric sick notes | die Elektronische Arbeitsunfähigkeitsbescheinigung)
Digitizing the Hospital workflows
Interconnected Healthcare systems(ISIK, MIO, FHIR, DICOM etc.)
TI(Telematikinfrastruktur) for ADT(Admissions, discharge, Transfer).
Emergency room Solutions
Clinical Decision Support
To implement KHZG, they includes all the standard regulations like GDPR, TUV certifications, data security certifications etc.
Credit: freepik
Where KHZG Is lagging?
Although the hospital perspective has been taken into account for all functionalities, KHZG has become limited in its focus to certain key areas, including patient portal business and TI implementations. As a result of this limitation, many companies have begun to focus only on winning KHZG tenders.
"More like a exam, where mug up everything required to pass this KHZG exam."
Many vendors are advertising solutions claiming to be KHZG-compatible. However, most of these solutions implement KIM along with their own functionality and brand it as KHZG, which is attractive to hospitals seeking reimbursement grants.
Additionally, the backbone of the KHZG - Telematik infrastructure (TI) - is still in its early stages with the release of TI 2.0, so it may take several more years to determine its success in various areas.
In the age of AI, KHZG somehow forget to define a relevant space of Generative AI or Machine Learning capabilities. KHZG is derived with mindset of 2000s, that needs a change for its better prospects.
Positive Trends
Many providers of digital health solutions and traditional hospital IT solutions have been boosted by KHZG to build solutions focusing on digitizing patient workflows. As a result, many EMR/HIS/KIS vendors have been developing and integrating solutions to digitize patient workflows.
Today, the digital healthcare ecosystem in Germany is clearly moving toward TI 2.0 as the backbone, which many software vendors have understood it as future.
Known Names in KHZG Solutioning space
m.Doc GmbH A Patient portal provider with KHZG compliance
LynxCare A Clinical Decision support provider with KHZG compliance
heyPatient A Patient portal provider with KHZG compliance
Doctolib A Patient portal with KHZG compliance
gematik GmbH TI infrastructure provider.
x-cardiac GmbH A solution provider for KHZG implementations.
SolarWinds A solution provider for KHZG implementation
Healex A solution provider focused on KHZG.
CGM Clinical A HIS Provider focused on digital Health.
Thieme A digital clinical solution provider.
Deutsche Telekom Healthcare A HIS provider as well as the Cloud provider focused on digital Health.
Our Key Takeaways
KHZG is just a beginning, it requires much time and money to reach its ultimate goals, now KHZG focuses on building these infrastructure. As for the next phase, it needs the German government's support to improve this infrastructure along with the path and implement them in order to reach as far as a normal person without technological barriers, which we are experiencing at the moment. It is definitely a role model for many healthcare systems around the world.
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