secuTrial® supports Ärzte der Welt

Theoretically everyone in Germany should have health insurance.

In reality, however, a remarkably large number of Germans do not have health insurance and for many this has been the case for years. The reasons for this situation are as diverse as people’s individual stories. According to official statistics, approximately 80,000 men, women and children are currently living without health insurance in Germany, and estimates put this figure far higher. Furthermore, certain groups of people who are technically insured – for example many homeless people – often have difficulty accessing the healthcare system. Many of these people are chronically ill, have not been to a dentist in years or are suffering from mental problems.

For over a decade now, Ärzte der Welt e.V. (the German member organisation of Doctors of the World) has therefore been offering free medical care and consultations to people in Germany with limited or no access to the healthcare system.

It is not only German citizens who benefit from this initiative. The service is available to everyone, regardless of their residency status or country of origin. On request, the service can be used anonymously.

Right from the start of the open.med project, Ärzte der Welt has attached great importance to patient documentation and to collecting both medical and social data.

This data is extremely important in order to provide patients with appropriate treatment and also to supply political decision makers with reliable statistics. Since 2014, Ärzte der Welt has been using a local database which serves as an electronic patient file. A team of volunteers set up the system and helped to maintain the database.

Due to the growing requirements placed on the system resulting from mobile and inpatient care and multiple locations, the database began to reach its limits. After searching for a simple and stable centralised administrative solution, Ärzte der Welt found two partners willing to offer support: the clinical research organisation GKM and us. Since July this year, the patient file has been made available via secuTrial®. We are pleased to be able to support this social cause by providing and maintaining the new database system. Volunteer doctors and medical assistants can now access their patients’ data more quickly and easily from wherever they are working. By migrating to our professional system, the security of patient data has also been improved.