Digital Healthcare in Germany: An Overview

Abstract

Digitization in the healthcare sector is a complex process and has cross-sectoral influences in which the interests of all stakeholders must be taken into account. The concept influences the communication between the actors, diagnosis and treatment options, the control of the individual health status and has a positive influence on organizational and documentary needs. The increased demand for health services, influenced by demographic change, already poses major challenges for the health system and is further reinforced by the shortage of skilled workers in the areas of nursing and medicine. The increasing digitalization in the health care system is associated with high costs, but offers the opportunity for better health care, as well in the outpatient as in the inpatient sector. New fields of action and approaches are emerging, which especially can be established in structurally weaker rural areas and with immobile patients and high-risk patients, in order to counteract the existing problems.