Since the regulatory inclusion of Digital Health Applications (DiGAs) in 2020, statutory health insurance funds have spent 400 million euros on what are known as ‘prescription health apps.’ According to a report from the GKV (statutory health insurance funds), which was covered by the Sunday editions of the Funke media group’s newspapers, these applications have been prescribed approximately 1.6 million times as of the end of 2025.
However, the same report also highlighted structural weaknesses within the system. It noted that the evaluation of benefit for DiGAs still requires improvement. Of the 74 DiGAs added to the DiGA directory, fewer than one in five could prove their benefit upon inclusion. Furthermore, 16 DiGAs were completely removed from the list of covered benefits because they could not demonstrate any practical benefit to patient care.
By the end of 2025, only 58 DiGAs remained in the GKV benefits catalog. This indicates that roughly a fifth of the products initially listed were withdrawn because their benefits could not be substantiated.
The health insurance funds also criticized the pricing of the apps as a “structural” problem. They pointed out that current legislation allows manufacturers to unilaterally set the price of their DiGA in any amount during the first year. This freedom in pricing can occur regardless of whether the application has proven any measurable benefit to the patient.
Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis, the Deputy Chairwoman of the GKV Association, stated that the importance of prescription apps in healthcare is increasing. She pointed to the rising prescription numbers and noted that over half of the applications initially tested were later permanently added to the DiGA directory after proving their usefulness to patients. Nonetheless, she underlined a major concern: “We also see that most DiGAs are still added to the GKV benefits catalog initially, without proof of benefit, and yet must still be financed by the health insurance funds at the manufacturer’s arbitrarily high prices”.
In response to these issues, the GKV is calling for “political corrections” that mandate proof of benefit from the very outset. The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices is responsible for vetting these applications.