The electronic patient record (ePA) is being expanded to include additional functions. The ePA apps of the statutory health insurance companies receive gradual updates. The innovations include push notifications about activities in the ePA and the electronic medication plan (eMP) as part of the digitally supported medication process (dgMP), which, however, will probably initially be used by very few doctors and pharmacists.
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Push notifications
With push notifications, insured people can be informed when new documents are stored in their patient files or when service providers access the ePA. Users can specify in the app themselves which events should trigger a notification, “for example when the discharge letter is uploaded after the hospital stay or when the new specialist’s practice accesses their own file. This creates even more transparency, overview and sovereignty over their own health data in the patient file,” says Gematik.
Another innovation is the eMP. Compared to the electronic medication list (eML), which has been available since the beginning of 2025, it is intended to offer a more comprehensive overview in the future. According to Gematik, it “not only represents an overview of the prescription and dispensing process, but also a more detailed presentation of the current and cross-institutional overall medication of an insured person with further information that supports the insured person in implementing the therapy safely and successfully.” In addition, according to Gematik, facilities will be able to add supplements to over-the-counter medicines (OTC) and narcotics to the list in the future.
The new functions, which should already be available in most ePAs, will not necessarily appear immediately after the update. In addition, many health insurance companies do not provide any information about the updates – neither in the app nor in the Play Stores. In individual cases it can help to delete the app cache and even then, experience shows that there can be deviations in the implementation – depending on the health insurance company and operating system.
Gematik makes it clear about the availability of the eMP: “The electronic medication plan will be rolled out gradually from mid-July and made available by the manufacturers step by step. So it is not yet available in all primary systems. As with the introduction of the ePA, piloting will take place in the model regions before the rollout starts throughout Germany.” The piloting has proven successful; Gematik wants to provide information about the results in the future.
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Full-text search in progress, AI desired
According to the IT service provider Bitmarck, version 3.1.3 is available for around 80 percent of statutory health insurance companies. The update is now available via the app stores and will be gradually rolled out to those insured. A full-text search for documents in the electronic patient file is to be added in 2026, which medical associations have been demanding for years. Furthermore, Andreas Strausfeld, chairman of the BITMARCK management, calls for “the possibility of using artificial intelligence in the ePA”.
(mack)
