8th National Digital Health Symposium 2026

The opening session provides an overview of the conditions needed to establish Germany as a strong hub for AI and digital innovation, with a particular focus on accelerating the translation of research into medical practice. It explores how medical research can contribute strategically to Germany’s economic strength — through sustainable value creation and the creation of highly skilled jobs. The discussion will examine the role of modern research infrastructures and reliable regulatory frameworks, as well as how to create an industry-friendly research environment that enables Germany to remain attractive to companies and investors in the global competition for innovation and investment.

The second session focuses on current national and European legislation on digitalisation. The Act on Data and Digital Innovation in Healthcare (GeDIG), including the new Health Data Use Act (GDNG), the Medical Register Act (MRG), the Research Data Act (FDG), and the implementation of the European Health Data Space (EHDS) will be examined against the realities of real-world evidence.

The third session focuses on the practical application of AI-powered solutions, digital care services and intelligent assistance systems—from patient and care management to the integration of data from digital health applications (DiGA) and wearables into the electronic patient record (ePA). The central question is how AI-enabled healthcare and its management can be successfully implemented while combining technological efficiency with human-centred medicine. The session will also critically examine key challenges, including privacy-compliant data generation and use for research, medical liability risks, and strategies for increasing acceptance and adoption among healthcare professionals.

The fourth session explores digitalisation as a key driver of transformation in medical diagnostics. From medical imaging to AI-powered analysis, advanced algorithms enable more precise diagnoses, faster and more individualised treatment decisions, and tailored, personalised care pathways. Smart screening approaches offer the potential to detect diseases at their earliest stages. To ensure the safe and effective translation of these technologies into clinical practice, the session will focus on methodological approaches such as federated learning, which enables privacy-preserving model training across institutional and geographic boundaries. At the same time, it will address critical challenges, including quality assurance and the prevention of bias in training data.

The fifth session addresses the strategic need for a resilient, sovereign and fail-safe digital health infrastructure. Against the backdrop of growing cyber threats and technological dependencies, the session will explore how health data can be used securely while unlocking its full potential for research and healthcare, how technological dependencies can be reduced, and how high-performing, interoperable infrastructures and resilient critical systems can be built. It will also discuss how Europe can strengthen its own technological capabilities without isolating itself from international innovation, and whether the European Health Data Space (EHDS), through secure data spaces, can deliver genuine digital sovereignty.

The final session focuses on the practical implementation of digital transformation, sovereignty and future readiness in the Public Health Service. Drawing on insights from nationwide funding programmes and concrete examples from Germany’s federal states, it examines how agile organisational structures, centrally hosted specialised applications and comprehensive training programmes can drive sustainable cultural change at the local level. A key focus is the seamless integration of the Public Health Service into the German telematics infrastructure (TI), as well as the transition from analogue document-based workflows to secure cloud architectures. The session will also explore the targeted use of dashboards and AI-powered assistant systems to significantly reduce the burden of routine tasks on healthcare professionals and strengthen the long-term pandemic resilience of public health authorities.