Mathias Vollert sits motionless in a wheelchair, orange-black electrodes attached to his right hand. Vollert cannot move her hand; it has been paralyzed since a stroke in 2015. To do this, the digital hand moves on the television screen set up next to him. And the way he wants it: hand open, hand closed, everything works. Because by measuring muscle impulses, Vollert’s thoughts can be read, so to speak. The aim is that in the future they will no longer only be able to control the virtual hand. But rather that he will be able to move his own hand again in the future thanks to his thoughts and artificial intelligence (AI), as the developers of the “Grasp Again” project from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg explain.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier listens carefully to these explanations and nods approvingly. The Federal President set off for Erlangen this Tuesday for a kind of information pressure refueling for the digital transformation in the healthcare industry. Steinmeier is going on a tour of Germany under the heading “Workshop of Change” to address the pressing questions of our time: How can we achieve climate neutrality? How can sustainable inner cities be created? Or simply: How does the transformation to a digital healthcare industry succeed? Behind each of these questions there is a “huge challenge,” he says.
Steinmeier wants, as he repeatedly emphasizes during his visit to the Medical Valley Center Erlangen and a few minutes’ walk away at Siemens Healthineers, to take away the “uncertainty and fear” of change. This cannot be avoided. But he is “very much in favor” of “not suffering this change, but rather shaping it”. The Federal President as an encourager.
The German head of state examines what this design could look like at various stations: First, two start-ups present him with their contribution to change; including Portabilis, an app to support Parkinson’s patients. Using a sensor in the shoe, the digital application analyzes the gait and can detect changes at an early stage. These indicate that the clinical picture is worsening and are sent directly to the treating neurologist for faster and more adequate treatment. The app also helps those affected with individual physiotherapeutic exercises.
One floor up, Steinmeier learns about the X-ray revolution. VEC Imaging GmbH & Co. KG develops devices with significantly higher performance. This means that mammographic examinations, for example, should only take a second. With mobile CT systems, patients should be examined immediately after an accident, for example, and treated more quickly.
Scott McCuen Koytek (right), Head of Training at Siemens Healthineers, explains an AI solution for radiology to Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
(Photo: Daniel Karmann/dpa)
Also abroad, because a significant portion of German innovations from the digital health sector are exported. In Germany, as Steinmeier puts it positively, there is still “a lot of potential” for innovation. One could also say: too little has been done so far. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation from 2018 placed Germany in second to last place in the digitalization of the healthcare system in an international comparison of 17 industrialized countries.
After all: the electronic patient file has existed since 2021, and from the beginning of 2025 all legally insured people should receive it automatically. A progress. In any case, Steinmeier prefers to point out the opportunities rather than the problems. Digital solutions could provide relief in view of the declining density of doctors in rural areas – also an issue in Bavaria. Even if, of course, not every older person views such a development without skepticism.
In view of the inventions and developments presented to him, Steinmeier praises the Erlangen location as a “beacon for innovation in health technology”. However, the positive examples seen here also make the challenges for the industry visible, such as a station at Siemens Healthineers. On a television screen, Scott McCuen Koytek, head of further training, presents how AI can relieve radiologists’ workload: namely with the data-based evaluation of X-ray images. You can see the lungs, aorta, spine; plus letters and numbers that automatically and AI-based alert you to abnormalities. This saves time during evaluation and can also help to detect diseases outside of the actual subject of the examination.
As long as there is enough comparative data on the basis of which the AI makes its assessment. As participants in a discussion on the sidelines of the series of events noted, this is not yet sufficiently the case in Germany. They also call for simpler bureaucratic and better financial conditions for start-ups in order to accelerate the digital transformation in the German healthcare system.