About German eHealth program

The German healthcare system is the biggest health card project in Europe to date. It is estimated that the expenditure of the health care system is USD 360 Billion. For instance, public insurance accounts for above 50% of the total, and the remaining accounts for the federal states, health insurance companies and the German citizens. The health project becomes promising when it came to Information Technologies. It was reported that the share of German healthcare expenditure was further increased after migrated Information Technologies, take into account both increasing efforts to establish regional electronic medical records and the governmental infrastructure projects by using smart cards and smart card readers - the German ehealth project.

The German ehealth project connects thousands of hospitals, pharmacies, and public health insurance companies. The central infrastructure of the German ehealth project consists of connected Virtual Private Networks and centralized infrastructure services in Germany. The local infrastructure set-up consists of different hardware and software, especially dedicated secure connectors interfacing the local or institutional system and card terminals to the national network.

Patients are to be equipped with an electronic health card, which is called elektronische Gesundheitskarte (eHC). The electonic health card (eHC) is a smart card issued by health insurance company in Germany and will allow doctors and pharmacists access to patient's data. For the medical professionals, too, will have to use smart cards - called ‘Heilberufsausweis’ (HPC), when accessing patient information and electronic prescriptions. 'Sicherheitsmodulkarte' (SMC) will be provided for medical professionals that will be inserted to the smart card terminals.