Hesse wants to introduce a uniform tele-emergency doctor system nationwide. As the Ministry of Social Affairs in Wiesbaden explained at the request of the German Press Agency, the technical and organizational framework conditions have been discussed with experts in several working groups since the beginning of 2022. It is about in which cases and in what way the use of a tele-emergency doctor makes sense and how the assignments are best coordinated. In addition, it is clarified with the State Medical Association which qualifications a tele-emergency doctor should have.

Hesse has been testing a tele-emergency doctor system in the Main-Kinzig district since the end of 2018 and in the Waldeck-Frankenberg district since May 2019, as the Ministry of Social Affairs explained. In the pilot project, the crew of the ambulance decides when emergency medical advice is necessary or useful. The team then independently contact a tele-emergency doctor. The location of the doctor's workplace can theoretically be chosen freely.

As part of the pilot projects, some operations in Hesse would be managed, for example, by a tele-emergency center in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, the ministry said. "That is technically just as possible as the processing of the assignments by our own tele-emergency doctor workplace in the Main-Kinzig district." Among other things, the system could be used to transmit the patient's vital data or the doctor to communicate with the ambulance crew via video.

According to the ministry, there is another remote emergency doctor pilot project in Hesse that is technically not quite as complex. With "telemedicine in the rescue service in central Hesse", vital data are also transmitted via the ECG to a tele-emergency doctor. In the meantime, however, communication is via a smartphone, and there is no camera installed in the ambulance. ECG stands for electrocardiography, which can be used to check the function of the heart.