Gematik, Germany’s national agency for healthcare digitisation, has approved a digital identity for healthcare in Germany, giving the green light to Deutsche Telekom’s ID service.

This is the basis for health cards and electronic ID cards to be used via digital devices such as smartphones in the future. From 2024, health insurers will be legally obliged to offer digital identities to their policyholders. This is based on the Digital Care & Nursing Modernisation Act (DVPMG).

“The digital identity in healthcare – the Health ID – guarantees security and ensures greater convenience with digital healthcare services,” said Gematik CEO Markus Leyck Dieken. “Insurance policy-holders thus have a central key for health applications such as the electronic patient file, the e-prescription and other digital health applications in their hands.”

German health insurance firm Barmer commissioned T-Systems in 2022 to provide and manage digital identities for its approximately 8.7 million policyholders.

“The digital identity is of great importance to Barmer’s policyholders and to us as a health insurance company,” said Siegmar Nesch, board member at Barmer. “It will be the gateway to digital services with which we set new standards for the protection of sensitive data. For this reason, we have been intensively involved in the process leading up to approval.”

Deutsche Telekom board member and T-Systems CEO Adel Al-Saleh added: “We are delighted that Gematik has given the green light for our ID wallet system at Barmer. Patients demand control over their own data. With their digital identity, they get secure and easy access. Technology is key to the digitalisation of healthcare as a whole. Digital identities create trust. Almost every area of life will benefit from this in the future.”

T-Systems developed the technology for this with digital identity provider Verimi, in coordination with Gematik (www.gematik.de). All data are encrypted on a secure and sovereign T-Systems cloud in Germany, even during processing.

Deutsche Telekom follows the so-called confidential computing approach. This means data cannot be viewed by third parties. T-Systems and Verimi (verimi.de) as operators also have no access. In this way, Deutsche Telekom creates a particularly high level of security for customers in the healthcare sector and the public sector. T-Systems has been a Verimi shareholder since 2017, and 26 German companies have a stake in Verimi.

Digital identities give citizens more sovereignty on the internet. Deutsche Telekom (www.telekom.com) is involved in recently begun EU field tests for digital identities. The company is testing the technology for unlocking mobile communications cards. The tests are taking place in Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Netherlands, Greece and Ukraine.