In May 2015 the German cabinet approved a legislative bill concerning secure digital communication and applications in health care, the so called ‘e-health act’. By means of this act a basis for health IT-applications – like for instance electronic health records – should be established. The INFOPAT project aims at linking all relevant player in the healthcare system via a personal electronic patient record (PEPA). The project „Gesundheitsregion der Zukunft“ (INFOPAT Rhein Neckar) is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and an alliance of 27 partners under the lead of the Dept of Health Service Research, University of Heidelberg. An essential idea of this project is that every patient is made administrator of a data-cloud, containing all his medical data. This shall not only improve consistency of care, but also realize the right to informational self-determination. However, these new options to put the patient at the center of information management in a comprehensive and self-determining way provide essential new ethical challenges to the relationship between physicians and patients. Our project focuses on the empirical needs analysis, development and ethical evaluation of the implementation of the PEPA prototype.
Contact Group Leader
Prof.Dr.med.Dr.phil. Eva Winkler
E-mail: eva.winkler@med.uni-heidelberg.de