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Digital Medicine has become an integral part of clinical infectious diseases. For chronic infections such as HIV and Hepatitis C, treatment with software tools for resistance phenotyping has become standard of care. Computer-assisted decision aids as well as electronic health records are currently being implemented on a regional basis in Germany. They assist physicians in avoiding treatment errors and selecting antibiotics rationally.Mobile devices allow documentation of the course of chronic infections and improve communication between patient and physician. This offers new opportunities in areas with underdeveloped health infrastructure. In the future, it will become possible to integrate complex datasets, such as genome and microbiome, into clinical treatment decisions. This would adjust treatment individually based on host immune response, metabolism, and microbiota colonization.Über Impfungen und gezielte Erregerdiagnostik und -therapie ist die Infektionsmedizin Vorreiterin der personalisierten Medizin. Datenprozesse im Rahmen neuer Infektionsepidemien sind Musterbeispiele der Möglichkeiten der digitalen Medizin.Die oft gut definierten Krankheitsbilder der Infektiologie und das hohe Niveau der verfügbaren Leitlinien sind ideale Voraussetzungen für computerunterstützte Behandlungsentscheidungen.Durch die Verbindung von Daten aus elektronischen Patientenakten mit den umfassenden Datensätzen neuer Technologien aus der sogenannten „Omics“-Forschung können neue Zusammenhänge erkannt und Prognosen verbessert werden.Die elektronische Gesundheitsakte eröffnet großes Potenzial im Sinne einer zielgerichteten Behandlung, insbesondere bei infektiologischen Notfällen.In Deutschland fehlen Infektiologen, ein Strukturwandel kann nur schrittweise vollzogen werden. Telemedizinische Konsultationen können helfen, infektiologische Expertise in unzureichend versorgte Regionen zu bringen.Die fast vollständige Verbreitung mobiler Digitalgeräte schafft neue Möglichkeiten für die Gestaltung der Arzt-Patient-Kommunikation sowie der heimatnahen Nachsorge.Beim Langzeitmanagement chronischer Erkrankungen sowie bei der Versorgung in Regionen mit schwacher Infrastruktur entstehen Möglichkeiten einer verbesserten medizinischen Behandlung.Die Digitale Medizin birgt Risiken durch die Schaffung großer Datensätze mit potenziell stigmatisierenden Patienteninformationen. Softwaresysteme, die Entscheidungen von klinischer Relevanz beeinflussen, bedürfen sorgfältiger Prüfung und Transparenz.

In 2006 and 2009 the US-American Commonwealth Fund (CMWF) already conducted international surveys with primary care physicians regarding their daily work and important aspects of care. In 2012 a third survey took place in 11 countries, with an emphasis on use of information technology.There was a written survey and a telephone survey of primary care physicians conducted in eleven industrial countries. In Germany, a random sample of 4 500 primary care physicians out of all 16 federal states were contacted by mail between April and July 2012. The data acquisition in Germany was conducted by the BQS Institute for Quality and Patient Safety and funded by the Federal Ministry of Health. The results were weighted by age, sex, region and medical specialty of the participating doctors.9 776 primary care physicians participated; 909 of them in Germany. The response rate in Germany was 20%. 80% of the primary care physicians in Germany are using electronic patient records. But special IT functions, with the exception of electronic prescriptions and ordering of laboratory tests, are little used compared to other countries. Even in countries with a wide use of special IT functions within the practices, the possibility of communicating with colleagues and patients electronically is often lacking. 35% of the German primary care physicians think the quality of care has declined since the last survey in 2009. Only in France do more primary care physicians share that feeling (37%). In 2012 a lot more German primary care physicians stated to have problems with long waiting times for specialist consults (2009: 10%; 2012: 68%).

The added value of information and communications technologies should be demonstrated precisely in such areas of care in which the importance of intersectoral and interdisciplinary cooperation is particularly high. In the context of the accompanying research of a supply concept for palliative care patients, the potential of a digital documentation process was comparatively analysed with the conventional paper-based workflow.Data were collected in the form of a multi-methodological approach and processed for the project in 3 stages: (1) Development and analysis of a palliative care process with the focus on all relevant steps of documentation. (2) Questionnaire design and the comparative mapping of specific process times. (3) Sampling, selection, and analysis of patient records and their derivable insights of process iterations.With the use of ICT, the treatment time per patient is reduced by up to 53% and achieves a reduction in costs and workload by up to 901 min. The result of an up to 213% increase in the number of patient contacts allows a higher continuity of care. Although the 16% increase in documentation loyalty improves the usability of cross-team documented information, it partially extends the workload on the level of individual actors. By using a digital health record around 31% more patients could be treated with the same staffing ratio.The multi-stage analysis of the palliative care process showed that ICT has a decisive influence on the process dimension of intersectoral cooperation. Due to favourable organisational conditions the pioneering work of palliative care also provides important guidance for a successful use of ICT technologies in the context of innovative forms of care.