Connecting Patients and Care: How a Coordinated Platform Approach is Modernizing German Healthcare

The Challenge: A Complex Multi-Vendor Landscape

Digital transformation in German hospitals comes with a unique set of hurdles that increase the complexity of interoperability focused projects:

Multi-vendor clinical IT. The SSB, as many other hospitals, operates a diverse set of established clinical systems, spanning imaging, patient administration, rehabilitation, and specialist workflows, each domain served by dedicated systems, optimized for their specific clinical purpose rather than cross-system data exchange. The challenge was to connect these systems without building fragile point-to-point interfaces. Data needed to be made available across the whole organization where it is needed and without rebuilding what already works.

Patient Identity Silos. With patient data managed independently across multiple systems, establishing a single, unified patient record is technically demanding. Duplicate records and registration gaps require active data governance and not just a one-time fix. The SSB already introduced a Master Patient Index (MPI) provided by the i-engineers prior to the project, tackling exactly this hurdle and making it possible to build the interoperability layer based on reliable patient information.

Vendor Orchestration. Real interoperability means coordinating not just four partners, but a web of systems and organizations. Each with their own release cycles, escalation paths, and constraints. This is where most digital projects in healthcare stall.

The Solution: One Coordinated Rollout

The project was structured as a single coordinated program under Philips, with Founda, Logex, and Timerbee as an integrated delivery team. This helped to focus and coordinate activities across the project journey and also enabled us to react and adapt to external factors as one team with one clear escalation path. Especially highlighting the relevance of accountability in settings with multiple involved system providers.

This is particularly evident in projects involving multiple system vendors: interoperability is not merely a technical challenge, but above all a matter of clear accountability and coordinated collaboration.

For our project, this meant four organizations working towards one outcome:

• Philips as prime contractor, owning the overall delivery, change management, and holistic project management
• Founda Health as the interoperability backbone, connecting the hospital's existing systems with the new patient-facing solutions
• Logex providing the patient portal where documents and discharge letters can be provided and appointment information lives
• Timerbee providing the appointment management system, embedded into the SSB website and consuming available appointments from the HIS

Each clinical system connects to the platform once, not to every other system individually. When a new system joins, it immediately benefits from all existing connections, leveraging the effect of growing interoperability.

Underneath, the Founda Platform connects existing clinical systems via internationally recognized healthcare standards (IHE, FHIR, HL7v2), ensuring that every system speaks about the same patient in the same way. Documents stay in their source systems and are made available wherever they are needed. Moreover, by using the existing MPI capabilities, the Founda platform enabled the SSB to connect existing hospital patient identities with respective patient portal accounts, to ensure: (1) Full control over patient identity mapping, (2) Patient identity linking directly via the Founda Health Portal, (3) Controlled document exchange based on pre-defined policies while meeting international and internal standards.

By aligning with governmental initiatives such as the Hospital Care Improvement Act (KHVVG) and the Hospital Future Fund (KHZF), this foundation supports future use cases without architectural rework, safeguarding digital investments against shifting regulations.

The Impact: From Silos to Seamless Care

In our Phase One rollout within key clinical departments, the results were immediate.

Appointment booking. Patients began booking appointments online within days, bypassing the classic telephone bottleneck. 24/7 availability for patients and a noticeable reduction in administrative effort to book and log appointments in the hospital information system. The latter was achieved through a direct ISiK interface between Timerbee and CGM Medico. As part of the booking process, patients are also invited to register in the patient portal, where they can view and manage their appointments.

Document administration. Patients create an account in the portal and upload relevant documentation themselves. Once their identity is verified, administrative staff at the SSB link the portal account with the existing clinical identity. Pre-defined medical documents from the connected CGM CLA archive can be retrieved in the patient portal, while clinical personnel see patient-shared documents in real time. To provide a tangible example of this direct value: SSB can now make PDF documents containing personalised QR codes for radiology images accessible directly in the patient portal. Patients can then access their images instantly. All this without relying on CDs, manual workflows at the radiology desk, or printed documents.

Cross-sector referrals to rehabilitation. The social services team creates digital referrals to the in-house rehabilitation institution Saludis directly in the Founda Health Portal. Staff at Saludis see the referral and the relevant documents in real time, and acceptance happens digitally. The workflow stays in one place across both organizations. The relevant admission data is transferred automatically to MediWorks, the primary system of Saludis, once the referral is completed.

Because these workflows are interlocked, they are not perceived as separate tools. Patients and hospital staff experience one unified journey from booking through discharge to rehabilitation.