Germany's Federal Ministry of Health, under Minister Nina Warken, replaced its 2023 roadmap with "GEMEINSAM DIGITAL 2026," a strategy for integrating digital tools into the daily workflows of nearly 73 million insured citizens and hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers. It is anchored in three action fields: digitally supported cross-sectoral care processes, systematic generation and use of high-quality health data for research, and benefit-oriented technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) and the second-generation Telematics Infrastructure (TI 2.0).
The centerpiece is the electronic patient record (ePA), evolving from a passive document repository into a "digital companion" that guides treatment. The shift from an opt-in to an opt-out model reversed years of stagnant voluntary adoption — participation had hovered around 1% — and by early 2026 nearly 60% of Germans reported awareness and an intention to manage their digital health identities. The ePA 3.0 iteration adds a digitally supported medication process with real-time prescription overviews and automated interaction checks against adverse drug events, digital appointment brokering, and a "digital first assessment" that lets patients enter symptoms into the ePA app for triage recommendations, potentially diverting uncritical cases from overburdened emergency departments. Milestones include opt-out migration completed in January 2025, active users growing from 4 million toward 20 million by 2030, and electronic physician letters reaching 100% transmission by end-2027. The strategy also mandates Medical Information Objects (MIOs) so records are machine-readable and can feed clinical decision support instead of accumulating as unstructured PDFs.
To address German research's "data hunger," the Health Data Use Act (GDNG) and its 2026 follow-up empower the Health Research Data Center (FDZ) to link ePA records, insurer billing data, and disease registries, with a 2026 objective of at least 300 research projects on this infrastructure, aligned with the European Health Data Space (EHDS) so records remain interoperable across borders.
AI is framed as a response to the acute skilled-worker shortage, targeting AI-supported documentation as standard in more than 70% of health and care facilities by 2028, validated in "secure test environments." In practice that means automated transcription and coding of consultations into structured ePA entries — relieving the 90% of nurses and doctors who report feeling overburdened by bureaucracy — AI-driven analysis of imaging data for earlier detection, and predictive analytics for personalized prevention. The strategy keeps a firm "human in the loop" principle: AI provides decision support, but final judgment remains with the professional.
The technical foundation rests on a high-stakes migration of the Telematics Infrastructure from RSA 2048 encryption to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), required by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). RSA-only connectors became dysfunctional on December 31, 2025, forcing thousands of practices to replace hardware or move to the cloud-based TI-Gateway; non-compliant systems can no longer issue e-prescriptions, transmit electronic sick notes (eAU), or access the ePA, and physician cards (HBA) must follow by June 30, 2026. The BMG positions the strategy as a bridge to "Vision 2030," making Germany a hub for top-tier health research and a domestic "AI-Med" sector while tele-monitoring shifts care from hospitals toward the home.