Sleep telemedicine in Germany: a developed model

ABSTRACT

Telemedicine has advanced and grown enormously during the last 10 years. Due to the Sars-CoV2 pandemia the pace of digitalizing diagnostics and therapy in the field of sleep medicine has accelerated. In Germany the main fields of sleep telemedicine are the group of sleep disordered breathing and the group of insomnias. Although there are several initiatives which aim an inventing digital sleep technologies as telemedical recording of relevant data for the diagnostics of obstructive apnea syndrome or digital applications for the treatment of insomnia coordinated approaches are being developed. The German Sleep Society aims on coordinating all initiatives with several approaches. Here the main focus is the standard which a needed for quality aspects. Another aspect is to transform the German health system, which is divided into the public and the private health insurance system, into a more flexible and digital friendly one accepting that sleep medicine is one of the best example to implement digital techniques for telemedicine. The German state of the art in the field of sleep telemedicine will be reflected to open the chance for other countries to have a deeper insight in the challenges and shortcomings for implementing sleep telemedicine in a highly sophisticated health care system.