Element powers T-Systems’ TI-Messenger solution
Germany’s public healthcare insurers will go live with real time communications based on the TI-Messenger standard on 15 July. With that being just six weeks after TI-Summit, a conference all about the telematics infrastructure for Germany’s healthcare industry, it’s fair to say that TI-Messenger is the most popular chat at TI-Summit!
TI-Messenger is one of the most forward thinking, and large scale, communications initiatives in the world. It aims to propel Germany’s healthcare system from paper and fax based communications to real time communications. In doing so, it will transform productivity and patient outcomes across Germany’s healthcare system, and protect patient data in a digital world. It also sets an excellent example of how to ensure digitally sovereign and secure communications between thousands of separate organisations, by building on top of the decentralised Matrix open standard.
T-Systems partnership
We’re participating at TI-Summit with our partner T-Systems. Element Server Suite Pro for TI-Messenger (ESS Pro for TI-M) gives T-Systems a complete backend for its TI-Messenger solution, allowing T-Systems to focus on building its frontend client. ESS Pro for TI-M operates within T-Systems’ Open Sovereign Cloud to power its TI-Messenger compliant solution so that T-Systems - and therefore its customers - has a backend that guarantees outstanding performance levels, dynamic scaling and continuous security updates.
Long Term Support (LTS) versions of ESS Pro for TI-M ensure ongoing TI-Messenger compliance, protecting against recertification risks. ESS Pro for TI-M is also built within an ISO 27001 accredited environment and designed to meet Cyber Resilience Act compliance, and includes SLA-backed Level 3 support. In short, T-Systems benefits from a professionalised product for its TI-Messenger backend, built and maintained by the software company that developed the Matrix open standard on which TI-Messenger is based.
Element Server Suite Pro for TI-Messenger
ESS Pro for TI-M efficiencies and flexibility
ESS Pro for TI-M is built on an optimised Matrix homeserver called Synapse Pro. It addresses the limitations of Community Synapse, the community-grade software for non-professional deployments on which some TI-Messenger implementations are based. Synapse Pro delivers savings of more than 80% compared against an equivalent implementation based on Community Synapse.
Designed to support TI-Messenger providers, it delivers three major benefits:
- Scale to massive size effortlessly and automatically
- Save resources and reduce operational cost
- Ease operations and improve operational stability
ESS for TI-M can be used to support all types of TI-Messenger deployments, which we split into two categories; large hosts, and small hosts.
ESS TI-M for large hosts
A large host deployment supports a single huge instance, such as a public healthcare insurer server with millions of customers. Synapse Pro replaces inefficient components with Community Synapse by introducing shared components and caches, and performance and caching optimisations. These new services are Rust-based, delivering better performance, improved security and a lower resource footprint. They are built according to cloud-native principles to be more dynamic, support horizontal auto-scalability, and support failover and rolling updates.
ESS TI-M for small hosts
A multi-tenancy deployment to support thousands of individual small hosts (each having just a handful of users), such as a TI-Messenger provider supporting thousands of local practices, labs, clinics or pharmacies. Synapse Pro enables a new mode of operation for better small host efficiency when creating a series of fully-featured TI-M compliant homeservers. It significantly reduces memory consumption per tenant by running multiple distinct tenants within one process, and segregating tenant data on database schema level. For easy and cost-efficient management of a whole fleet of homeservers, the solution provides a tenant management API and is based on Helm charts that can easily be used with CD-tooling and GitOps processes.
An excellent model for ecosystem-wide communications
The vision for TI-Messenger came from Gematik, Germany’s national agency for digital medicine. It saw the opportunity to improve productivity and patient outcomes by digitalising a national healthcare system that still relies on paper and fax machines. However with more than 150,000 organisations in Germany’s healthcare industry, it knew it couldn't use a siloed, proprietary communications platform such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Threema or Wire. Realistically, such systems only support internal communications as opposed to communications between multiple separate organisations.
In devising a communications solution for the entire healthcare ecosystem, Gematik also wanted to ensure that every healthcare organisation could be assured of its digital sovereignty. The third requirement was end-to-end encryption for the security of patients’ protected healthcare information.
Those three criteria - digital sovereignty, interoperability and end-to-end encryption - were already offered by the decentralised Matrix open standard. So Gematik built on the Matrix standard to include extensions tailored to healthcare, closed federation and communication rules, compliance with security and data protection policies (e.g. from BSI and others), adjacent functionality (org-admin-client, registration service) and integration with existing infrastructure such as FHIR directory, Sektoraler IdP and secure authentication mechanisms for health professional cards (HBAs) and electronic institution cards (SMC-B).
The resulting TI-Messenger standard ignited a competitive marketplace to develop interoperable communications, guarding against vendor lock-in and further strengthening digital sovereignty.
Perhaps most important, Germany has mandated the use of TI-Messenger (TI-M ePA). That helps ensure implementation and unlocks private sector investment. It also means that, with a healthcare specific collaboration and messaging system in place, it makes a ban on unsuitable alternatives such as email, insecure systems such as Microsoft Teams, and consumer-grade messengers such as WhatsApp and Signal genuinely effective.
Governments around the world are realising the importance of sovereign, secure and interoperable communications. TI-Messenger is a ground-breaking example of how a nation can guarantee the provision of trustworthy communications.