March 2015

BIO Deutschland Meets Parliamentary State Secretary Dorothee Bär

BIO Deutschland Meets Parliamentary State Secretary Dorothee Bär
Representatives of the SME Alliance with Parliamentary State
Secretary Dorothee Bär, fifth from left Viola Bronsema,
BIO Deutschland. (Photo: German Association for Small and
Medium-sized Businesses).

BIO Deutschland, the German Association for Small and Medium-sized Businesses, and other members of the SME Alliance recently met Dorothee Bär, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. BIO Deutschland primarily reported on the work of its new Working Group on Bio IT and Big Data, as well as on the association’s current recommendations on digitisation in healthcare. The association regards interoperability as a prerequisite for making use of the potential of IT in healthcare in the interests of improved patient care. BIO Deutschland pointed out that digitisation in healthcare also has potential to significantly improve the efficiency of prevention, diagnostics and treatment and that it lowers process costs. The data gathered during medical research are complex and come from a wide range of sources, such as diagnostic devices, computer simulation, clinical studies and test results. These data are presented in an equally wide range of file types. In order to avoid expensive “retrofitting”, an expandable telematics infrastructure should be created in Germany. From the start, the planning for this system should include potential for research and development, with the help of bio-IT experts. The Parliamentary State Secretary underlined that she too regarded health as a very important topic. She said that she preferred to speak about “smart data” rather than “big data” in this context. The topics of broadband expansion, net neutrality, liability for internet misuse, and digitisation in small and medium-sized enterprises were also discussed at the meeting.

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