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meIn October 2019, shortly before Covid-19 is believed to be transmitted to a human for the first time, Jens Spahn visits Nigeria. The Minister of Health (CDU) is impressed: the country appears to be fighting the Ebola epidemic, which broke out in 2014 have won. A core component of disease control: the “Sormas” epidemic management system, which was jointly developed in Germany, to track contacts in real time.
More than a year later, several 10,000 people are infected with the corona virus in Germany every day. to. Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) is upset. In one The resolution of the Council of Ministers of early December says: “The health authorities are obliged to immediately use the Sormas program in a uniform manner throughout Bavaria.” The previous breath did not help, now comes the compulsion.
The software, which already works in Nigeria but not yet in our country, brings together the exchange of data between local authorities, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) – Germany’s most important authority in the fight against the pandemic – and state authorities. and he is also one of the authorities. Corona app plugin. If the move to digital works this time, Bavaria would be ahead of the rest of the republic.
Because offices are still crashing with extremely important contact tracing of infected people under the load of paperwork and fax tables. The country is also in the second lock because this “contact tracing” was partially abandoned weeks ago.
There have been dozens of calls from the digital economy since the start of the pandemic and reminders. “Many offices have been on edge for months,” says Sassan Sangsari, medical director of the startup Siilo, which wants to promote digital networks in the healthcare system through a messaging app. “Despite the overtime and staff growth, it is not possible to adequately follow up on contacts and communicate the results with the necessary urgency.”
In his opinion, the strange discrepancy between effort and result is mainly due to the digital backwardness of the authorities. “The problems are not surprising, since one of the most important devices for the transmission of data between offices and laboratories continues to be the fax,” criticizes the former surgeon.
Even the RKI is having a hard time. The institute could have been better equipped for a long time if politicians had only wanted to: As WELT AM SONNTAG’s research has shown, the budget committee approved only four of the 68 requested IT positions.
RKI boss Wieler slows down all expectations
Around 400 health authorities work nationwide for the RKI. Everyone should work more efficiently through Sormas by the end of 2020 at the latest. So far there are not even 100. So it is not surprising that it is still not very clear how the virus is spreading. But RKI chief Lothar Wieler is decelerating expectations again: the introduction by the end of the year could not be guaranteed, he said Tuesday.
The failures of the authorities affect the entire chain of complaints in the monitoring of infected people. Laboratories, which have been at full capacity almost everywhere since spring, are particularly hard hit. “We had to go back to the digital Middle Ages,” says Andreas Bobrowski, president of the Professional Association of German Laboratory Physicians.
Source: WORLD infographic
“Many laboratories are technically well equipped. But it is useless if we send numbers to the authorities that do not arrive ”. Reaching out by fax was an involuntary decision, he says. “The process could be much faster if the public health system had not been financially neglected in the past.”
Programs such as Sormas are needed to ensure messages run smoothly. “Unfortunately, there is no standardized reporting software, which of course slows down the process,” Wieler said in early December. “This is not so much a failure, but the federalism that prevents it.”
In fact, the Federal Ministry of Health hesitated for a long time with clear statements. Therefore, many offices acted independently and installed programs, some of which only work in their own district. Almost every house now works its own way, there are no interfaces, a nightmare for IT experts.
An example from Bavaria makes it clear: Only one of 76 offices was using Sormas at the end of November, according to a request from the Greens in the state parliament. Another 35 introduced the “BaySIM” software developed in the spring; the name already suggests local limitations, which have now been confirmed: Bayerischer Rundfunk recently reported a lack of features and interfaces.
Paper mess and help from the Bundeswehr
In April, the state government celebrated itself as a “national pioneer”; After a few months, the Bavarian approach alone is now on the verge of failure due to incompatibility with the rest of the republic.
In September, the federal government promised four billion euros for personnel and digitization with the “Pact for the Public Health Service”; the first funding will arrive at the earliest in 2021.
Until now, the investments have tended to be in additional staff to follow up contacts: semi-skilled temporary workers who have to key in addresses and phone numbers, scan reports, compare and save data twice. A complex process in which the Bundeswehr has yet to help in many places.
Additionally, data protection is slowing down and employee recycling can sometimes take a long time. “While authorities have developed a high level of technical competence in the context of mainstream IT, experiences with cloud offerings are often not as widespread,” says Matthias Kuss, CEO of Tyme Group, a provider of digital video consulting. This complicates the already idle bureaucracy in selecting the software vendor.
“If we had highly efficient technology, we wouldn’t need a lockdown”
The heart of Tübingen’s strategy is free trials. As early as May, Tübingen appealed to the federal and state governments to regularly evaluate geriatric care personnel. In an interview with WELT, the mayor of Tübingen called for more efficient contact follow-up.
Even his own advisers give the federal government devastating testimony. The digitization of the administration has been delayed too long, writes the National Council for Regulatory Control (NKR). The independent advisory body’s 2020 annual report is read almost desperately in some places. For years, the council has been calling for constant digitization. Corona reveals the “considerable backwardness at all levels of government,” he says, for example.
“A lot of problems could have been avoided,” writes NKR President Johannes Ludewig elsewhere. “For example, reporting channels to the health authorities that are too long. Fax machines and paper slowed down crisis management ”. The council immediately sent out an urgent warning: slow progress threatened to have negative consequences for Germany as a business location.
Office digitization delayed
In view of this misery, the digital industry now believes itself the great winner of the crisis. Across industries, he seems to have accepted the fax machine as a symbol of backwardness: “The virus will also keep us busy in 2021. It is no longer enough to communicate with people by phone and fax,” says Sangsari.
The Federal Association for Digital Economy (BVDW) also calls for a new beginning: an overwhelming majority of the population considers digitization as part of the solution to the economic crisis, according to a BVDW survey. “In the fight against the virus, the fastest wins,” says Managing Director Marco Junk. “You have to wonder why we are only now talking about a program that should make the work of the offices more efficient. Loss of time due to inefficient data transmission costs human lives. “
All digital tools are available: programs like Sormas, the Corona app or Climedo’s symptom diary. “However, its potential effects are limited, as comprehensive digitization of offices has been neglected in recent years,” Junk says.
After all, Corona sparked a boost on one of the delayed projects. According to the RKI, 363 health authorities are now connected to the German Electronic Information and Reporting System for Protection against Infections (DEMIS), but this does not mean that they also use it. The ministry commissioned a feasibility study as early as 2013 and the project started in January 2016.
According to the RKI, the implementation should be completed by December 31, 2020, five years later. On Tuesday, Lothar Wieler also softened this deadline in a joint press conference with Health Minister Jens Spahn: The software should now “be online in January.” It worked faster in Nigeria.
