MUNICH, GERMANY - Starting 2014, BARMER GEK, a German health insurance fund, will source its electronic healthcare cards from Munich-based technology company Giesecke & Devrient (G&D).
Over the term of the contract, G&D will deliver a total of 14.8 million first- and second-generation healthcare cards. With headquarters in Berlin, BARMER GEK is Germany's second-largest health fund, and it has now commissioned G&D with the manufacture and optical and digital personalization of its electronic healthcare cards – as well as the dispatch of those cards to the insured – over a six-year period. The initial second-generation smartcards will be issued as early as 2015.
Hans Wolfgang Kunz, Head of the Government Solutions business unit at G&D, is delighted: "BARMER GEK's decision to entrust G&D for the first time with the delivery of health insurance cards is an important mark of confidence. This major order will enable G&D to expand its share of the healthcare card market in Germany even further. As from 2014, one in three new electronic healthcare cards in Germany will be produced, personalized and delivered by G&D."
G&D is an experienced specialist when it comes to developing and implementing complex security solutions for the electronic healthcare market. For instance, the company not only issues electronic healthcare cards, but also a corresponding high-performance backend system. Around 90 percent of the 69 million health cards for people belonging to statutory health insurance funds in Germany are administered using the CAMS backend system, a card application management system provided by G&D. The high-security CAMS system handles communication with other systems on a card-specific basis, and manages, updates and supplements all the data stored on the healthcare cards or generated during the card issuance process. What is more, Gematik, the company in charge of Germany’s electronic healthcare card program, recently tasked G&D with developing the new smartcard operating system for the second-generation healthcare card.
