Prescriptions via app? Why your next doctor's visit could soon be digital

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Diagnosis from your cell phone – Health insurance companies have big plans

The next revolution in healthcare is just around the corner—at least if the statutory health insurance companies have their way. In the future, patients will first have to open an app before they even think about making a doctor's appointment. The plan is to make the use of a digital navigation app mandatory before every visit to the doctor's office. What sounds like a nice extra feature could therefore become mandatory.

An app or telephone hotline will use a smart questionnaire to determine where the patient actually needs to go: their family doctor? A specialist? The emergency room? Or perhaps an online prescription would suffice—without any contact with a doctor at all? That is precisely the goal of the health insurance companies. And they are serious about it.

Prescriptions, referrals—all without a doctor?

The concept envisages that the system will use electronic patient records to determine how urgent a case is, whether an on-site visit is necessary, or whether a click is sufficient to obtain a prescription or referral. According to the health insurance companies, chronically ill people who need regular medication will in future be able to obtain their follow-up prescriptions without having to contact their doctor.

The deputy head of the German Health Insurance Association, Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis, sees this as a long-overdue modernization: "We must finally bring the German healthcare system into the digital present." And she believes that there will soon be care processes that are completely digital, without the need for a person to speak to a doctor.

What sounds simple is a radical transformation.

What at first glance sounds like a sensible step toward modern medicine is in fact a massive intervention in the usual processes in the healthcare system. With the app becoming mandatory, the first contact with a doctor would no longer take place in the office, but via a digital questionnaire.

It saves time—yes. It may also save costs—certainly. But it also carries risks. What if an app misclassifies the urgency of a case? What if a person prefers to do nothing because the digital process is too complicated? Or what if important symptoms are simply overlooked in the standard questionnaire?

And then there is another fundamental question: Do we really want access to medical care to be tied to an app?

And what do we think about it?

The idea sounds modern—but it also invites alienation from genuine medical care. There is a fine line between "efficient" and "indifferent." Yes, doctors' offices are overloaded. Yes, the system urgently needs new solutions. But if personal contact becomes the exception and an app decides whether I am sick enough to need help, then we have not solved the problem, but only digitized it. Medicine needs not only data, but also dialogue. Those who forget this may save themselves the waiting room, but they will pay for it elsewhere.

Source: n-tv.de