In this article for ICT & Health, Armin Scheuer, Founder of ASC – The Digital Health Action Network, describes success factors of Germany’s national digital maturity assessment of hospitals. The country adopted a best-of-breed approach that could provide other governments with a blueprint for their own national digital maturity measurement. Read the full article here.

Germany has taken a much-needed shortcut toward digital transformation of its healthcare sector.

The country used a multi-stakeholder expert group in the development of a country-specific measurement methodology based on established best practices and aligned with the seven funding dimensions of the government’s political goals.

The DigitalRadar consortium was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Health to assess the impact of the €4bn ($4.3bn) in funding to improve the digital infrastructure of hospitals provided under the German Hospital Future Act (KHZG).

The DigitalRadar team engaged high-profile organisations and individuals and ensured ongoing alignment and transparent communications with all relevant stakeholders. Germany’s average digitisation score of 33.3 out of 100 possible points showed hospitals in Germany perform best in the infrastructure dimension, but they score lowest in remote services such as patient participation and telehealth.