German healthcare goals to exchange faxes and telephones with safe messaging
Germany’s healthcare system has begun a programme that goals to enhance communication and decision-making by changing faxes, telephone calls and voicemails with encrypted messaging providers.
The venture, which is being overseen by Germany’s Nationwide Digital Well being Company, Gematik, guarantees a extremely safe different to WhatsApp that may permit sufferers, healthcare professionals and insurance coverage corporations to coordinate medical therapy.
Preliminary trials have proven that the service, often called TI-Messenger, has led to important time financial savings for medical workers by liberating them from making repeated telephone calls to talk with colleagues who are sometimes too busy to reply the telephone.
The service additionally guarantees to supply a extra dependable, auditable different to fax communications, that are extensively utilized by hospitals and clinics. Germany has a inhabitants of 83 million individuals and 5.7 million healthcare professionals who may gain advantage from utilizing TI-Messenger.
The venture reached a milestone in July 2025 when, following a authorities mandate, all German residents with public medical insurance who use their insurers’ apps got the choice to make use of TI-Messenger.
Safe communications
Marie Ruddeck, product supervisor at Gematik, says the venture goals to develop a messaging protocol for the well being sector in Germany that might permit each well being establishment to speak in a safe means whereas nonetheless retaining management of their very own information.
“The objective is to provide a messaging system to everybody, so everybody can talk with one another inside healthcare. To do this, we need to give each healthcare supplier in Germany the chance to construct their very own messaging system,” she instructed Pc Weekly.
Gematik revealed an preliminary specification for TI-Messenger in 2021, primarily based on the Matrix open community expertise normal, which is gaining traction amongst governments in Europe as a “sovereign” different to messaging and collaboration software program supplied by US Huge Tech corporations.
Matrix, which describes itself as an open protocol for decentralised safe communications, is coordinated by a non-profit neighborhood curiosity firm, the Matrix.org Basis.
Pharmacists see advantages of messaging
A trial of TI-Messenger in Hamburg final yr confirmed that it could result in important time financial savings in communication between pharmacists and medical doctors in hospitals.
One position of a pharmacist is to evaluate the remedy of sufferers to examine whether or not medicines would possibly conflict with one another. The trial discovered that pharmacists sometimes made 10 telephone calls a day, which might final half an hour every, to debate remedy with medical doctors.
“I’d like to see what we develop [with TI-Messenger] and what we study from our errors shared throughout the borders into different healthcare methods”
Marie Ruddeck, Gematik
They typically needed to make a number of calls earlier than efficiently making contact as a result of medical doctors had been too busy to reply the telephone. Pharmacists utilizing TI-Messenger discovered that they solely needed to make one name a day.
One other trial is because of begin subsequent yr in Bavaria, in a college clinic, which plans to make use of TI-Messenger to hyperlink sufferers, pharmacists and medical doctors.
TI-Messenger is available in two variations. TI Messenger ePA turned out there to all German residents with public medical insurance to obtain from 15 July 2025.
A second model, TI-Messenger Professional, additionally launched in 2025, meant for medical doctors, nurses, pharmacies and insurance coverage corporations, has but to be extensively rolled out. It permits well being professionals to ship safe messages, maintain group chats and alternate paperwork.
In accordance with Ruddeck, the vast majority of medical insurance corporations have already got their very own messenger service or are deploying one. Well being clinics are additionally starting to roll out the expertise.
Take-up has been slower amongst medical doctors. Their fast precedence is to implement ePA, an digital affected person folder that turned obligatory in October to retailer digital affected person data, which is taking priority over TI-Messenger.
Hen and egg
Ruddeck says one of many largest challenges is the necessity to attain a important mass of individuals utilizing the TI-Messenger community in order that it turns into a extra great tool.
She describes a “rooster and egg drawback” the place individuals say, “Why ought to I get the app to speak with individuals when there are not any individuals to speak with?”
Ruddeck says it will be significant for insurers and different corporations supplying TI-Messenger providers to elucidate the advantages of messaging to the general public and the healthcare business.
“We have to persuade individuals to construct clusters. Let’s discuss together with your pharmacy, your physician, your care service,” she says.
Phillipp Kurz is the founding father of Famedly, the primary TI-Messenger app authorised by Gematik in 2024. He suggests there must be monetary incentives for medical doctors to make use of TI-Messenger and that making it simpler to onboard prospects would assist.
Ruddeck acknowledges that it may be a problem for big organisations to alter the behaviour of workers. Clinicians could also be utilizing unofficial apps like Sign, for instance.
TI-Messenger requires extra work to arrange than off-the-shelf messenger providers, however as soon as it’s working, it’s simple to make use of, she says.
Ruddeck says it was a departure for Gematik to decide on to again an open supply expertise. “However we managed to try this as a result of we actually wished to make use of this protocol. It’s state-of-the-art,” she says.
Future imaginative and prescient
Ruddeck says the long run imaginative and prescient of Gematik is for an built-in healthcare system that ensures individuals have the fitting info once they want it.
Medics regularly take notes on paper – for instance, when a affected person is taken by ambulance to a hospital. Typically their handwriting is tough to learn and data can get misplaced. Individuals must spend time retyping it into pc methods.
“We need to be as digitised as doable and to have info the place it must be, when it’s wanted,” she says. “We’ve got all the knowledge, however we don’t have the fitting methods but to get it all over the place,” says Ruddeck.
“I believe with TI-Messenger we will actually change the behaviour away from telephone calls and emails,” she provides. Sooner or later, it could be doable to automate some solutions or triage sufferers.
Ruddeck met with different authorities representatives at a Matrix convention in October and hopes to develop collaborations with different nations which might be additionally deploying Matrix-based messenger providers.
Norway, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are among the many nations contemplating deploying the expertise of their well being providers.
“I’d like to see what we develop and what we study from our errors shared throughout the borders into different healthcare methods,” she says.
In the end, it could be doable to develop a European well being ID that would hyperlink sufferers throughout healthcare methods in a number of nations.
