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07/12/2020

As of mid-January 2021, the German healthcare system will standardize all prescriptions using a central, digital service, thus making them easily and quickly available to both consumers and all healthcare institutions. The identity check, a high-security and high-availability system as a central element of the overall service was awarded to RISE last week. RISE is working together with noris network AG and msg systems ag on this project.

In the EU-wide tender procedure for the introduction of the e-prescription, gematik has awarded the development and operation of the identity provider (IDP) to the Austrian company Research Industrial Systems Engineering (RISE) Forschungs-, Entwicklungs- und Großprojektberatung GmbH. The service had been previously tendered as a second lot within the scope of an EU-wide announcement (No. 2020/S 101-244269 of May 26, 2020).

The identity provider is a central access system that authenticates the identity of the participants (hospitals, GPs, pharmacists and insured persons) and enables access to the e-prescription systems. Separating the identity provider from the e-prescription provider into two lots and awarding both lots to different companies ensures that security-relevant services are distributed among different organizations. RISE will develop and provide the identity provider on behalf of gematik and in accordance with the technical specification based on the Standard OpenID Connect by mid-2021

For the implementation of this 7x24x365 service, which guarantees an availability of 99.99% due to its over-arching use, the Viennese technology company RISE, with its headquarters Berlin, is supported by the Nuremberg-based IT infrastructure company noris, which provides its Germany-wide datacenters, network and cable infrastructures as housing for the identity provider. The consulting and IT company msg, headquartered in Ismaning, is also supporting the development of the project, especially in the areas of service management and delivery as well as quality and test management.

Gematik awarded the e-prescription service, which was also put out to tender as lot 1 in the EU-wide announcement (No. 2020/S 101-244296 of May 26, 2020) to IBM Germany. Together with the e-prescription app developed by gematik, the starting signal for electronic prescriptions will be given on July 1, 2021. As of January 1, 2022, electronic prescriptions for prescription drugs will be mandatory, making processes faster and more efficient. From the moment the GP issues the prescription, to the insured person handing it over at the pharmacy of their choice through to billing with the health insurer.

Thomas Grechenig, spokesperson for Management of RISE: “Identity services are a central element of Europe’s autonomous, digital future. For example, it digitally reports back to the mobile phone trying to access the service “I know you. You may come in.” In the case of the e-prescription for the whole of Germany, this will happen an average of 2 million times a day in the future. The system's downtime must not exceed a maximum of 4 minutes per month and be less than 1 hour per year. In total. To achieve this, you must have a global grasp on IT. And RISE does. Our Identity and Access Management (IAM) experience in many industry sectors over 20 years was certainly one of the reasons why we were awarded the development of this service.

We are also very pleased that two such competent German IT houses as the agile noris and msg with its comprehensive range of products and services are loyally accompanying us in the implementation of this task. With currently 73 million citizens as users, the telematics infrastructure (TI) is currently Europe’s largest, autonomous, public IT infrastructure. It is growing in a solid, future-oriented evolution of IT security, privacy protection and high availability while maintaining high-level demands of integrity and security conditions in collaboration with the Bundesamtes für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI German Federal Office for Information Security) and the Bundesbeauftragten für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit (German federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information).

Rolf Kranz, member of the Executive Board of msg: “The e-prescription is one of the key drivers of digitization of Germany’s healthcare sector. We are therefore very pleased to support this project as part of the consortium and to contribute our long-term experience and industry expertise in the healthcare business segment.”

Stefan Keller, member of the Executive Board of noris: "The requirements to be met perfectly suit the strategic direction of noris, with its focus on regulatory requirements for security, availability and compliance in its own datacenters in Germany, which have been certified by different organizations.”