MHH: Digitally signed treatment contracts with signotec

Over 65,000 patients are admitted as inpatients to Hannover Medical School each year, and each of these patients must sign a treatment contract upon admission. This used to be done manually on paper, with the patient signing each copy of the contract three times: one for the patient themselves, one for the archive and one for the patient’s file on the ward. The copies then had to be sorted and transported via the internal mail system either to the archives department or to the relevant ward – a time-consuming process during which it sometimes happened that important copies only reached their destination via detours.

Since 2015, this process has been significantly streamlined. Once the health card has been scanned at the registration desks of the central patient admissions department, the paediatric clinic, the dental clinic, the gynaecology clinic, the A&E department and the mobile patient admissions unit, the patient’s master data is transferred directly into the treatment contract via contract management software. The time-consuming manual entry of master data is completely eliminated; only the answers to a few additional individual questions need to be entered. The treatment contracts are then signed using signotec’s electronic signature solutions.

Specifically, the MHH uses the signoSign/2 software in combination with the signotec Sigma signature pad, which is integrated into the Citrix environment via a Virtual Channel driver. Once configured, the signature pad communicates with the server via this established virtual channel. The signotec Sigma itself is characterised by its robust and compact design, making it ideally suited for use in mobile patient admission. Thanks to its large sensor, even complex signatures can be captured precisely on the pad.

The signoSign/2 signature software, in turn, is used to create and sign PDF documents by hand, which can then be processed automatically. The advanced electronic signatures created with signoSign/2 comply with the ISO standard and the requirements of the eIDAS Regulation, thereby offering reliable evidential and legal certainty.

This approach saves the MHH a huge amount of time, money and resources: only one copy of the treatment contract is printed out for the patient; everything else is captured and archived digitally or forwarded as appropriate.

In addition to creating treatment agreements, the MHH also uses signotec’s solutions for discharge management at the end of a hospital stay. Thanks to their ease of use and reliable performance, the solutions have been received very positively by both staff and patients.