Overview
- A technical fault with Institutionskarten (SMC‑B) issued by trust provider D‑Trust has stopped many pharmacies and medical practices from authenticating users on Germany’s digital health network.
- The disruption has blocked core services including e‑prescriptions, electronic sick notes (eAU) and access to electronic patient records (ePA), preventing some patients from collecting medicines they have digitally been prescribed.
- Gematik, the federal digital health agency, says D‑Trust is analyzing the fault to identify and fix the cause and has not announced when normal service will resume.
- Pharmacies report being forced to turn customers away, facing lost sales and extra work, and they say they received little direct communication about the problem from authorities or the trust provider.
- Because SMC‑B chip cards are used to authenticate entire practices and D‑Trust is a major issuer, the outage highlights how reliance on a small number of trust-service operators can produce wide, immediate effects on patient access and clinic workflows.