Germany’s e-health smartcard scaled back
Key clinical components of Germany’s flagship national e-health smartcard programme look set to be dropped or delayed because of problems encountered in the first seven pilot sites.
News
Fujitsu Siemens launches health tablet PC
Fujitsu Siemens computers has launched the ESPRIMO MA, a mobile tablet PC for the health sector.
News
Medica: Crisis? What crisis?
Is the health industry blind to economic reality and guilty of wishful thinking? Philipp Grätzel reports from Medica.
Feature
CfH condemns smartcard sharing
One in six GPs claim that NHS staff in their area have shared smartcards, according to a survey by doctors’ magazine Pulse. The poll of more than 300 GPs found that one in six family doctors said they were aware of NHS staff sharing smartcards in their area, and one in 20 GPs admitted they […]
News
Gematik to evaluate USB sticks for patient records
The German national health IT body has agreed to evaluate USB sticks as a means of storing and carrying electronic patient records.
News
Dutch EPR rollout on track
The Dutch national electronic patient record project is progressing slowly, but steadily. Sixty five doctors have been connected to the infrastructure so far. By the end of the year, this number will increase to 200. “We are confident that we can stick to our goal and have all 8,000 GPs using the national electronic patient […]
News
Gematik approves first smartcard reader
The security specialist Hypercom is the first company to receive an approval for its smartcard reader by the German health IT organisation gematik. The announcement is very timely: the smartcard rollout is planned to start in October. The official schedule for the German rollout says that smartcard readers will be given to doctors in North-Rhine-Westphalia […]
News
Doctors and pharmacists join smartcard critics
With its rollout coming closer, critics of the German smartcard project are once again becoming louder. Three regional political representative bodies of doctors, dentists and pharmacists are now supporting an anti-smartcard alliance. The “Stoppt die e-Card” alliance was launched in January this year and is a rather diffuse conglomerate of civil rights organisations, regional interest […]
News
Gieseke and Devrient wins smartcard contract
Electronic Healthcare Card Munich-based identity technology specialist Giesecke & Devrient has won a contract from the German health insurer Kaufmännische Krankenkasse and 28 corporate health insurance funds to manufacture and supply around ten million electronic healthcare cards. The contract includes electronic personalisation of the smart cards so they include data relating to the insured persons […]
News
German medication specialists back decision support
Two leading members of the medication commission of the German National Chamber of Doctors have urged German hospitals to implement “intelligent” computerised physician order entry (CPOE) with decision support systems to improve patient safety. They also advocated personal electronic medication lists in chronically ill patients. The CPOE-topic was high on the agenda at the “Hauptstadtkongress”, […]
News