How was the content of the digitalisation strategy developed?

In developing the Digitalisation Strategy, the Federal Ministry of Health used an intensive process in which more than 500 stakeholders from the health and care system were involved at an early stage, most notably patients and people in need of long-term care and their family members. In an open and participatory process, the different views and suggestions were discussed and considered using various participative and dialogue formats.

The public announcement for this participation process was made in September 2022 with a kick-off event in Berlin attended by Federal Minister of Health Prof Karl Lauterbach. In parallel, intensive background talks were held with experts from care provision and from the worlds of healthcare administration, research, industry, and also representatives of patients and their family members. Stakeholders from the healthcare and long-term care systems also had a number of opportunities to input their views and expertise, for example by means of an online survey. The outcomes from the kick-off event, expert interviews and the stakeholder input provided were further explored in eight topic-related specialist forums attended by representatives from healthcare practice. After consolidating the results, a second online stakeholder consultation process was conducted in which participants from the various participation formats were again able to provide feedback on key issues. Finally, the input provided was evaluated and the final version of the strategy document was compiled.