Health Insurance Firm Commissions Digital Identity Management

German health insurance firm BARMER has commissioned T-Systems and Verimi to provide and manage the digital identities of its 8.7 million policyholders. The contract has a term of seven years, and the companies have not disclosed the contract value.

T-Systems, which is part of Deutsche Telekom AG, relies on the Verimi ID Wallet to provide the digital identities of policy holders. The ID Wallet has already been approved by the German Federal Office for Information Security as a secure procedure. T-Systems operates the service in its Open Telekom Cloud, which includes three data centres to provide protection and zero-outage for the ID service.

Law comes into force in 2023

As patient records are becoming increasingly digitised, so the smartphone is becoming an electronic health insurance card, with policy holders receiving a digital twin of their insurance cards on their smartphones. The digital identities, managed by T-Systems and Verimi, will allow clients to access their medical data and use the app running on the smartphone as proof of insurance.

All health insurers in Germany will have to offer this type of service by 2023 in line with the ‘Digital Modernisation of Health Care and Nursing Act’ (DigitaleVersorgung-und-Pflege-Modernisierungs- Gesetz or DVPMG), which came into force in June 2021.

In addition to providing a digital identity for each patient, the Act also stipulates that data on patients who require nursing care should be integrated into the electronic patient file (ePF). Patients must be able to access their ePF via a ‘stationary terminal device’.

From 2023 this also applies to an additional electronic patient summary which should include patient details in the event of an emergency.

T-Systems and Verimi will integrate the ID wallet into the BARMER app. The stored electronic ID card and biometric processes such as Face ID ensure unique identification. In this way, users can access the electronic patient file in a highly secure manner, for example, for requesting electronic prescriptions.

T-Systems and Verimi want to offer their solution to other insurers as, in principle, the technology is suitable for almost all areas of online transactions.

eIDAS regulations

Digital identities give citizens more sovereignty on the internet. The German federal government and the European Union (EU) are driving this development with the set of eIDAS regulations (electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market) that will help businesses, citizens and public authorities carry out secure and seamless electronic interactions across EU borders. The companies involved in the deal with BARMER hope that this project will send a signal to the public sector that the federal government and the private sector want to work together to help digital identities achieve benefits for consumers and citizens across the EU.

For Deutsche Telekom, this is also a strategic issue. The company has been a Verimi shareholder since 2017, along with 20 other German companies that are listed on the DAX exchange.

According to Roland Bruns, Head of IT at BARMER, ‘the introduction of digital identities gives our policyholders easy access to our online services at the highest level of security. We are pleased to have T-Systems and Verimi, two experienced partners, at our side to provide this user- friendly solution as quickly as possible.’

Meanwhile, Roland Adrian, CEO of Verimi, commented that ‘with the Verimi ID Wallet, we have pioneered in the German market a way for our users to use their personal identity data – digitally, conveniently and securely. We can now use our know-how advantage and our proven infrastructure together with T-Systems to offer BARMER policy holders a digital identity solution, quickly and efficiently. We are proud to be making an important contribution here to the rapid digitalization of healthcare in Germany.’