On July 7, 2025, there was a significant disruption in the healthcare sector caused by an outage of secunet Connectors. These connectors are crucial for connecting medical facilities to the Telemedicine Infrastructure (TI) within Germany’s health system. The malfunction impacted many doctor’s offices and rendered their operations nearly impossible.
The secunet Connector is a specialized router provided by secunet, designed to ensure secure and reliable connection of medical establishments to the TI. It is used in various healthcare settings such as clinics, nursing homes, hospitals, and pharmacies for decentralized solutions. The connector plays an essential role in facilitating secure communication between different service providers and enabling new digital applications.
The malfunction occurred due to a runtime extension issue with RSA certificates affecting secunet Connectors using firmware version 5.50.3 or later from July 4, 2025 onwards. As a result, many practices faced issues accessing their services such as KIM, VDSM, ePA and eRezept.
The Gematik Portal documented extensive problems on the Gematik side regarding this incident. Affected service providers were advised by secunet to manually re-register the connector and activate specific settings in client system configurations for a workaround solution. This process required administrative access to the Connector’s GUI or REST API, adding further complexity and inconvenience.
Further complications arose on July 9, 2025 when Arvato Systems Digital GmbH experienced an outage affecting their service providers’ ability to connect to the TI. Consequently, services like ePA, E-Rezept were not accessible during this period for those relying on Arvato’s services.
The ongoing issues and frequent outages raise serious concerns about the reliability of digital health systems. With each disruption, trust in these critical infrastructure components wanes further. Healthcare professionals are left grappling with uncertainties daily as they attempt to provide care amidst technical difficulties.
Third Party Info Around The Topic: Digitalization Challenges In Healthcare
Numerous sources discuss the challenges faced by healthcare providers during the digital transformation process. Various articles highlight issues ranging from security concerns, lack of interoperability between systems, and inadequate training for staff transitioning to new technologies. These factors contribute significantly to operational disruptions observed in medical practices.
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