ABDA Raises Concerns Over E-Prescription Failures

The German Federal Union of Associations of Pharmacists (ABDA) has expressed serious concerns regarding repeated outages of the Telematics Infrastructure (TI) affecting the functionality of electronic prescriptions (E-Rezepte). The ABDA argues that these interruptions have significantly hindered pharmacies' ability to access electronic prescriptions, leading to operational disruptions.

In a recent communication to Florian Fuhrmann, the Managing Director of Gematik, ABDA's Managing Director presented alarming statistics: from May 24 to June 6, there were reported disruptions on eight out of fourteen days, which temporarily prevented pharmacies from accessing electronic prescriptions. This situation reflects poorly on the reliability of the TI, which currently shows only a 56 percent stability rate in application performance, a notable decline compared to the previous year.

According to the ABDA, the primary issues arise not from the E-Prescription service itself but from related infrastructure components, such as identity providers and VPN services. The organization emphasized that pharmacies cannot afford to bear the financial burdens resulting from these infrastructure failures.

Furthermore, the ABDA estimates that tens of thousands of patients have been affected by these outages, which pose significant risks to patient care. The inability to redeem electronic prescriptions raises considerable concerns about the therapeutic safety of affected individuals.

In light of these issues, the ABDA is calling for a reassessment of the TI's reliability concerning electronic prescriptions. They are advocating for a comprehensive end-to-end analysis of the system, as various components of the TI indirectly impact the usability of the E-Prescription application in practice. The organization criticized the current prioritization of outages as insufficient and pointed out the lack of detailed investigations into the root causes of these failures.

The ABDA has requested Gematik to conduct a thorough analysis of all outages since the widespread implementation of electronic prescriptions, focusing on the following inquiries:

• How many days per year have disruptions been recorded that hinder or prevent the use of the E-Prescription application by service providers?
• What is the average duration of these outages before affected system components are restored to enable full usability of the E-Prescription application?
• In how many instances has there been a failure to successfully redeem an electronic prescription at pharmacies due to a disruption?

As of now, Gematik has not publicly responded to the ABDA's concerns.