Reading E-Prescriptions via Health Insurance Cards in an App
Project Overview
Client: Sanacorp, a leading pharmaceutical wholesaler
Project goal: Develop a solution to read e-prescriptions via health insurance cards
Team: Mixed team including 4 TNG Consultants
Approach: Agile methodology, iterative adjustments, prioritization of early go-live, integration with external systems
Key Achievements: Development of the mea® app for e-prescription processing, tripling of weekly pre-orders, and over 180,000 e-prescriptions redeemed via the app
The Situation
Our client Sanacorp, a leading pharmaceutical wholesaler, delivers medication to pharmacies and offers innovative digital products such as a chat for consultations and medication orders. Originally launched as the meadirekt® website, this service evolved into the comprehensive mea® app.
The project began in response to a fundamental shift in Germany’s healthcare market: the transition from paper-based prescriptions to digital e-prescriptions. Initially, e-prescriptions used printed QR codes, but the latest regulations require direct reading via health insurance cards.
Our Target
The project aimed to develop a software enabling e-prescription reading via health insurance cards, thereby streamlining medication orders and improving patient care.
Any new process for reading e-prescriptions has to adhere to strict technical and security standards set by the gematik (Gesellschaft für Telematik im Gesundheitswesen, Germany’s Society for Telematics in Healthcare): The eHealth-CardLink specification requires (amongst other things) a physical card reader per pharmacy, as well as a certification by gematik to ensure safety and integrity. To harmonize processes across the entire pharmacy sector, GEDISA (Gesellschaft für digitale Services der Apotheken, Germany's Society for Digital Pharmacy Services) has developed a standardized solution. A particular requirement in our project was to connect to GEDISA's systems.
Our Approach
A hybrid team of four TNG developers worked closely together with the client to integrate the GEDISA interface. The use of agile methodologies enabled us to move forward despite evolving GEDISA requirements and incomplete initial specifications.
We reached an important milestone by being one of the first apps to go live at the start of the test phase, immediately after approval by gematik. To overcome technical challenges, e.g. lack of documentation, we relied on iterative development cycles, intensive analyses, and prototyping. The interfaces that had to be integrated were, on the one hand, an API for retrieving tokens and, on the other hand, software development kits for Android and iOS provided by GEDISA, which enable data exchange between the health card and GEDISA's servers. This integration proved to be a challenge as the GEDISA systems themselves had not been finalized, and we had to rely on interim versions.
A decisive factor for success was the conscious acceptance of uncertainties during development to allow the early go-live desired by the customer. Through continuous coordination with the PM and flexible adaptation of our software to changing requirements, we were able to mitigate risks and ultimately provide a stable solution. We relied on a combination of agility, technical expertise, and proactive stakeholder management to achieve on-time implementation - despite very challenging circumstances.
The Result
The mea® app now fully supports e-prescription reading via health insurance cards, restoring its core functionality: seamless medication pre-ordering.
And the success of this project is already clearly measurable:
Pre-orders per week have more than tripled since launch.
Users have redeemed more than 180,000 e-prescriptions via the app.
This underlines the app's high usage and the added value for end users.
Connected pharmacies and of course our customer Sanacorp are also very happy. The team received a lot of praise from Sanacorp's management and Supervisory Board for the agile implementation, technical expertise, and trustful collaboration.
The next steps focus on enhancing the user guidance and refining the error handling to further streamline the process. Long-term goals include optimizing integration with external systems, though implementation scope depends on third-party interfaces. We're looking forward to innovating in digital healthcare together.