Institute within the scope of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG)
Institute within the scope of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG)
The information system for data transparency is currently under construction. In future, it will provide anonymised healthcare data from the statutory health insurance, particularly for analyses of healthcare provision as part of healthcare research and for control tasks within the statutory health insurance. Among other things, the data include information on outpatient and inpatient treatment as well as on the provision of medicinal products for insurants.
We expect the data analyses to begin in the second half of 2013.
Health insurance funds currently already provide pseudonymised data to the Federal Insurance Office for the morbidity-oriented risk structure compensation. In future, we will pseudonymise these annual data once more in order to combine them over several years. Until now, this information has not been available in such a complete and comprehensive form.
As a basic rule, all insurance numbers are replaced by pseudonyms. In addition, there is a legal requirement for further strict data protection measures. In that way, we will to all intents and purposes rule out that individual insurance members can be identified through use of the data.
The German Social Security Code (§§ 303a to 303e Social Insurance Code V) regulates which institutions are allowed to receive data. Only the group specified by law will in future be able to use the healthcare data we provide. It includes among others certain institutions of health insurance providers, the Federal Joint Committee, representations of patients and service providers on a national/federal level as well as institutions for research and healthcare reporting. The data are to help them e.g. to improve healthcare quality or to plan healthcare provisions.
The information system is funded by the statutory health insurance. Additional usage fees may arise from the processing of the data by DIMDI.
With the ordinance on the implementation of the regulations
regarding transparent health data, DIMDI was given the task of
putting the data transparency information system into place. The
first requirement is building work on our data processing center.
In addition, we have to set up the organisational structures for
the trust center and the data processing center which have to be
kept entirely separate, and recruit staff. On 1 February 2013, we
will receive the first healthcare data from 2009 and 2010.
We are currently developing the necessary workflows. In
cooperation with the Federal Insurance Office, the Federal Office
for Information Security, and the Federal Commissioner for Data
Protection and Freedom of Information, we determine how the data
will be transmitted. In addition, a procedure has to be defined and
programmed in order to transform the annual pseudonyms into those
covering multiple years. In addition, we are in the process of
developing an application form, a catalogue of criteria for the
processing of applications, checking procedures, a licence
agreement and a schedule of fees. For that reason, third-party use
of data is expected to start in the second half of 2013.
Unfortunately, we are not able at present to answer questions regarding exact timings or specific data. However, we will keep you informed about our progress here.