DGermany is threatened with the third Corona fall without a uniform and effective digitization strategy for the German health authorities. The federal and state governments are arguing about which software the authorities should use to report corona infections to the Robert Koch Institute – and who has to pay for it. As soon as the incidences rise again significantly, the familiar chaos of reporting corona cases and tracking the contacts of infected people should return.
You have to know: In mid-May, the federal states “urgently” asked the Federal Ministry of Health in a decision that has so far received little attention to provide a nationwide core application for the reporting procedure for infection protection by August 31 at the latest. It should set up a corresponding project “immediately” and present a “first pilot” in June – just as if solutions such as Surfnet or the once so praised Sormas were not already available.
Politicians once placed great hopes in the Sormas digital platform in particular. It was developed years ago by the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) in the fight against the Ebola epidemic and was used primarily in Africa until the start of the corona pandemic. In November 2020, the federal and state governments decided on a nationwide rollout to relieve employees in health authorities of unnecessary work. The many different systems, some of which were only based on Excel spreadsheets, led to extra work because they are often not compatible with one another. It was therefore planned to introduce a uniform system nationwide with Sormas.
The authorities do not want Sormas
However, many of the approximately 400 health authorities in Germany had refused to replace the laboriously acquired systems with Sormas, always citing the fact that the staff was overworked. However, the times of low incidences were not used to convince the health authorities to use it uniformly. In addition to the lack of capacity, there were also major reservations about Sormas in many offices: the implementation proved to be cumbersome and time-consuming.
So now a new application is to be created – and the deadlines set by the countries are already causing horror: those involved consider it utopian to make a first pilot available by June and a completely new core application by the end of September. From the point of view of the Federal Ministry of Health, however, this is no reason for trouble: In response to the “urgent request”, Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) refers to the responsibility of the federal states for equipping the health authorities. It is up to them to decide whether to use digital tools.
“In this context, the federal government can only act in a supportive manner and provide offers that are as low-threshold as possible,” it says. And these are already ready: “Survnet is being continuously developed by the Robert Koch Institute and will also be available free of charge for health authorities in the coming years,” said the FAZ. It was also continuously updated.
The Federal Ministry of Health, on the other hand, no longer seems to be hoping for Sormas to be a resounding success: it was previously funded in a research project and was also available to the health authorities free of charge. According to the ministry, this funding is now running out as planned. However, the application is still available to the health authorities. In the future, however, financial support will only be available via the Pact for the Public Health Service (ÖGD). Even Survnet cannot cause a storm of enthusiasm. It is considered outdated and hardly compatible with other systems.
In the dispute over digitization, health politicians are now also sounding the alarm: The health policy spokesman for the FDP, Andrew Ullmann, referred to the numerous “unmistakable” complaints about Sormas that should be taken seriously and eliminated. Contact tracing, networking, detection, mitigation and containment must be done quickly and easily digitally. That is why a quick remedy must be found, either through a comprehensive upgrade or a completely new system. “Many millions of euros have already been spent, obviously for a system that is not working well,” Ullmann told the FAZ
The epidemiologist Gérard Krause, who has been developing the platform for the HZI for years, points to the great demand from abroad: “Almost every week a new country comes along that wants to introduce Sormas.” Also independent of the decision of the German health ministries the platform evolved because it is being used in an increasing number of countries for very different diseases. A non-profit foundation will ensure the long-term availability of Sormas as openly accessible software without a license fee, Krause promised and added: Sormas has been more thoroughly checked by federal and state data protection officers than any other digital system in the public health service. “It will be a long time before another system has created an equally comprehensive data protection concept and had it checked just as thoroughly.”
