Since 1 July 2008, SHI-accredited physicians have had to use "tamper-free" software for the electronic prescription of medicines according to the AVWG, which is intended to prevent, for example, substitution suggestions from inadvertently changing the physician's medication.
The panel doctors' practices may only use computer programmes that comply with a "catalogue of requirements" for doctors' software of the statutory health insurance funds and the Federal Association of Panel Doctors.
In this way, SHI-accredited physicians should no longer be influenced by software that favours the product of certain pharmaceutical companies when selecting the 'appropriate' medicines.
Therefore, since 1 July 2008, panel doctors can only use software that has undergone a certification procedure. Several software manufacturers opposed this certification procedure with urgent applications to the Social Court of Berlin. They wanted to ensure that panel doctors could continue to use their software without certification. They stated that turnover losses of more than 40 million euros were to be feared in the next three years alone due to the new regulation.
The court dismissed the applications as inadmissible. Only panel doctors were affected by the regulation. Software manufacturers could continue to sell untested programmes. However, they had no legally protected right to have the same market opportunities as in previous years. Accordingly, there is also no right for panel doctors to continue to use untested software for the selection of medicines. Moreover, a representative of the software companies had explicitly emphasised in an interview that the products "are certified without any problems, because we do what is required by law anyway". If this was so, the court said, it was incomprehensible why the applicants would not simply initiate the certification procedure. Legal protection against the certification procedure would not be necessary.
The software manufacturers have since filed an appeal against the decision with the Berlin-Brandenburg Regional Social Court.
Reference number of the social court: S 79 KA 148/08 ER
Source: Press release of the Social Court of Berlin of 06.08.2008
Attorney at Law Michael Ullrich, LL.M. (Information Law)
E-mail: mailto:m.ullrich@goldberg.de
