THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
Advice from industry on efficient health care in Europe
photo: CompuGroup Medical
The right medical information in the right place at the right time
Interview with Frank Gotthardt, founder and CEO of CompuGroup Medical (CGM), Koblenz
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artmut Bühl: Mr Gotthardt, you are the founder and CEO of CompuGroup Medical, one of the leading eHealth companies in the world. As the new digital infrastructure for the networking of players in the German healthcare system is taking shape, your company has recently received approval for the nationwide roll out of the first eHealth connector. This will allow medical applications to be updated on this infrastructure without any need for hardware replacement. On this occasion you declared:“the right medical information in the right place at the right time can save peoples’ lives, prevent suffering and help to heal diseases”. What is the philosophy behind that? Frank Gotthardt: Let me tell you a sad but true story. Only some weeks ago a young man died in one of the larger German hospitals as a result of wrong medication due to a mix-up with another patient in the room. This young man was basically healthy. He did not die of a disease but only because of this preventable mix-up. We feel so sorry for this person, his loved ones and also for the health care professional who made the mistake. We are convinced that the right medical information in the right place at the right time provided by an efficient digital information system could have saved this young man’s life.
Hartmut Bühl: What do you see as the remedies for this situation? Frank Gotthardt: This is just one simple but revealing example of a larger issue: missing information links at critical points in time – missing medical information that should catch the practitioner’s eye and attract his attention. We have to look at the patient’s whole journey and every one of us has examples from our own experience of missing information. These missing links have to be closed – and often this can only be achieved efficiently with digitalisation. Our vision is that nobody should suffer or die because medical information was missing at some point!
Nannette Cazaubon: But isn’t this an isolated case? Frank Gotthardt: No, unfortunately not. According to estimates, nearly 200,000 people in the European Union (EU) have died because of adverse drug effects, like for example bad drug interactions. There is a general consensus that a huge proportion of these deaths could have been avoided.
Nannette Cazaubon: But what should that be based on? Frank Gotthardt: This eco-system must be based on the following: national governments but also the EU should focus on the framework conditions needed to create a competitive climate in the eHealth industry that enables innovation through the pursuit of excellence.
Hartmut Bühl: The EU’s ambition is to become an important player in digitalisation. Are we on the right track in Europe, particularly in respect of digitalisation in health care? Frank Gotthardt: I am convinced that the EU has the knowledge, the experts and the technology to compete with other regions such as the US – we know this because we do business there too. But the EU needs one more ingredient to become a really important player in this game. And that is an eco-system for innovation.
