Interoperability requires more than just sending health data from one database to another

This year's DMEA, Europe’s leading digital healthcare event, focused on the digital transformation of the healthcare system. Better Deutschland was there to talk about the trends in digital healthcare as well as show the Better products and solutions, based on FHIR and openEHR standards.

DMEA 2022 attracted around 11.000 visitors from around the world, there were more than 500 exhibitors, and 300 speakers from Germany and abroad. It was a great opportunity for in-person interaction and the event offered a lot of opportunities for companies to show their latest products, experiences, and innovations, as well as for the visitors to hear about the latest trends in digital healthcare, get to know the people in the business and hear from many experts.

All the speakers provided practical insights into the topics of the industry - from ePA, e-Subscription, and DiGA to data protection and IT security to digital patient empowerment. Patron of the event, federal Minister of Health, Prof. Dr. Karl Lauterbach, spoke in his keynote address about the need for Germany to expand digitalisation in healthcare. He mentioned the need to provide better diagnostics through the electronic patient records, he talked about the status of the e-prescriptions, and the current strategy process involving all stakeholders.

For the Better use of data
DMEA was the first official event where Better Deutschland team could show their solution during an exhibition. The team explained to the customers and visitors about the digital transformation in healthcare, about the importance of open data and openEHR, and about the Better digital health platform and low-code tools that are designed to make better use of data. One of the most used words at DMEA was interoperability. Better was able to show how easy and valuable it is to work on the same data together with Medanets, an app provider that has a capable nursing app. Only the open data approach allows working mutually on the same structured health data, instead of having multiple copies in various systems and just sending them to other proprietary systems.

Days were full of interesting conversations, discussions, demo sessions, and valuable knowledge sharing. Better had many visitors on the booth and showed multiple demos of Better products. Better Team also engaged with CETUS, Enovacom, and Recare in a charity action to support Ukraine refugees.

On the last day of the DMEA, Managing Director Björn Lehnhoff participated in the 10. Smart Healthcare Forum on the booth of the Krankenhaus IT Journal. In a panel discussion with Frederik Humpert-Vrielink, CETUS Health IT Leadership, Fabrice Treziny, Enovacom, and Malte Wieland, Recare, they shared their feelings about this year´s event, trends in the industry, and looked into the future expressing their stand on the digitalisation in German healthcare and the future of newest technologies. The participants agreed on one important fact, that the healthcare systems need to follow standards, not vendors, and allow the stakeholders to work on the same healthcare data, owned by the citizens.

Björn Lehnhoff, Managing Director of Better Deutschland, summed up his thoughts after the successful event: “The community agrees that real interoperability is more than just sending health data from one database to another. “