Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Aug 25, 2022
Date Accepted: Apr 13, 2023
The Digital Healthcare Act – A Chance to Remove the Dust from the German Healthcare System: Interview Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
In 2019, Germany launched the Digital Care Act. The reform enables physicians to prescribe health apps as treatments to their patients.
Objective:
We aimed to determine the extent to which the integration of health apps into standard care could be considered beneficial, and which aspects of the regulation could still be complemented.
Methods:
We conducted a semi-structured interview study with 23 stakeholders in Germany and analyzed them thematically. We used descriptive coding for the first-order codes and pattern coding for the second-order codes. We then carried out a quantitative study in cooperation with Kaia Health Software GmbH and analyzed anonymized data from 2208 users. Finally, we compared the difference in pain and costs associated with the app treatment versus the traditional treatment.
Results:
We created 79 first-order codes and 9 second-order codes following the interview study. Most stakeholders thought that the option of prescribing health apps could improve treatment quality. However, supervision and guidance through practitioners were recommended. We observed that the frequency of exercising with Kaia had a positive effect on pain reduction.
Conclusions:
The inclusion of health apps into German standard care could improve the quality of treatment by expanding treatment portfolios. Our empirical study showed that retrospective user data have the potential to enable examination and assessment of the cost effectiveness of health apps and may be used to compare them to traditional treatments. In our case, the app treatment showed the higher relative cost-effectiveness ratio when compared to the traditional treatment.
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