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Germany’s Electronic Patient Record Has Only 3.6% Active Users

Automatic account creation plus a provider upload mandate have not translated into broad patient engagement.

Overview

  • A survey of major statutory insurers finds active use stuck at 3.6% of insured people.
  • The share has risen by only about one point since July 2025 despite an October rule requiring practices and hospitals to upload lab results, medical letters and operation reports.
  • Techniker Krankenkasse reports about 850,000 active users out of 11.5 million records, Barmer 440,000 out of 8 million, and the AOK group counts roughly 365,000 with a health ID enabling access.
  • Insurers auto-created roughly 70 million records early in 2025 for about 75 million insurees unless they opted out.
  • Patients must log in to set provider access and hide sensitive information, yet outreach efforts have yielded little broader adoption.