Digitizing Local Pharmacy Care at gesund: E-Rezept, Telemedicine, and Store Integration

About how I led product execution to connect patients, telemedicine, and Germany’s local pharmacies into one compliant, omnichannel health platform.

gesund operates Germany’s leading pharmacy-first digital health ecosystem. It links patients with on-site pharmacies, doctors, and telemedicine partners, enabling E-Rezept submission, medication ordering, and in-person consultation.

The goal is to make E-Rezepte simple, route care to nearby pharmacies, and keep data private under German and EU rules:

• Rapid regulatory change (Gematik specs, CardLink → PoPP).
• Fragmented pharmacy IT (Warenwirtschaft/POS, wholesalers, robotics).
• Trust and adoption across thousands of independent pharmacies.
• Strict GDPR, consent, and health-data security.

I drove a phased-in platform roadmap:

• E-Rezept ingestion and routing. QR scan, NFC eGK, KIM; PoPP enforcement; SLA-based queues; fallback flows for edge cases.
• Pharmacy Cockpit. Orders, reservations, chat, substitution handling, pickup/delivery, inventory signals; integrations with NOVENTI, PHOENIX, Sanacorp, BD Rowa; role-based access.
• Patient App. E-Rezept wallet, medication plan, family profiles, reminders, PAYBACK, status and notifications.
• Telemedicine Connect. Secure handoff from partners (e.g., Zava, Doctorderma) to chosen local pharmacies; pharmacy opt-in controls.
• Compliance & Security. DPIAs, consent ledger, purpose limitation, encryption at rest/in transit, audit trails.
• Reliability & Observability. SLOs for scan→pharmacy ACK, fulfilment start, ready-for-pickup; incident playbooks.

I redesigned the CardLink flows with PoPP-ready redemption and NFC eGK support. Users scan or tap, select a nearby pharmacy, and receive real-time status. Edge-case handling covers partial fills, substitutions, and out-of-stock with pharmacy chat.

I managed and owned APIs and consent flows so qualified e-prescriptions from teleconsultations route to any opted-in local pharmacy. Pharmacies control acceptance windows and workloads. Patients track fulfilment and communicate in-app.

I prioritised features that keep value and the supply chain local: same-day pickup, local delivery slots, proximity matching, and OTC add-ons in the same basket. The Cockpit exposes substitution guidance and reimbursement notes to reduce back-and-forth.

I instituted funnel analytics from scan → pharmacy selection → confirmation → pickup/delivery. Teams ran A/B tests on pharmacy ranking, default delivery options, and chat prompts. I shipped onboarding playbooks and training for pharmacies to accelerate go-live.

I aligned Product, Engineering, Legal/Privacy, Pharmacy Ops, and Partners on versioned APIs and release cadences tied to Gematik timelines. I added SLOs dashboards, error budgets, and runbooks for national-scale events.

• Faster, simpler E-Rezept handover with PoPP and NFC eGK.
• Higher share of prescriptions fulfilled by local pharmacies.
• Reduced abandonment across scan and routing steps.
• Pharmacy opt-in controls improved workload management.
• Shorter time-to-fill through inventory and substitution flows.
• Higher patient retention via reminders, family profiles, and status updates.