German hospital group to roll-out EMR

The Sana-Kliniken – number four among the private hospital chains in Germany – have signed a contract with the Berlin-based GMD, a specialist provider for eHealth solutions. The latest announcement reinforced a growing trend among german hospitals: the two biggest private hospital chains, Asklepios and Rhoen, are already working on similar EMR projects. the aim of each programme being to make it possible for referring doctors to access hospital patient information and to communicate directly with the hospital via a secure internet connection.

“The exchange of medical information between hospitals and resident doctors is a key factor for building bridges between inpatient and outpatient healthcare”, says Gerald Gotz from the IT department of Sana.

What is different avout the Sana-project, compared with other hospital EMR programmes is that it will support an open German healthcare communication standard called D2D (“doctor-to-doctor”).

D2D has been developed by the Kassenaerztliche Vereinigungen, the political representative body of hospital resident doctors in Germany. This should mean that it will be far more comfortable for many resident doctors to access the hospital information, because the doctor’s own IT-system will usually be capable of handling D2D data.