It’s a milestone week for Germany’s TI-Messenger initiative as public healthcare insurers go live with their TI-Messenger based solutions!
TI-Messenger is one of the world's most ambitious and progressive communications initiatives. Its goal is to transition Germany’s healthcare system from paper and fax to real-time digital communication. This shift will significantly enhance productivity, improve patient outcomes, and safeguard sensitive health data in the digital era.
By leveraging the decentralised Matrix open standard, TI-Messenger is also an excellent example of how to enable secure, digitally sovereign communication across thousands of independent organisations through a huge private federated network.
By building on the Matrix open standard, the German healthcare system has introduced industry-wide real time communications that preserve each organisation’s digital sovereignty and ensures vendor-neutrality. There is an entire ecosystem of companies providing competing yet interoperable solutions including; Akquinet, Awesome Technologies, Compugroup Medical (CGM), Deutsche Telekom, Element, Famedly, Gedisa, Saturday and x-tention.
ESS Pro for TI-M approved by gematik as part of Telekom TI-Messenger
We announced our work with T-Systems International back in June, and we’re pleased to add that T-Systems International and Telekom Healthcare Solutions have now received gematik approval for their solution. It’s confirmation that Telekom TI-Messenger meets gematik's high requirements for data protection, information security, and interoperability.
Telekom TI-Messenger enables the efficient exchange of messages, images, and files, greatly enhancing communication and collaboration across the healthcare sector. Institutions such as Barmer (see LinkedIn post) and KBS are already adopting Telekom TI-Messenger as a secure, future-proof solution.
The server-side component of the Telekom TI-Messenger solution is powered by Element Server Suite Pro for TI-Messenger (ESS Pro for TI-M), an upstream vendor-supported backend that delivers high-performance, scalable infrastructure and continuous security updates. It is designed to meet the latest specifications for both the TI-M Pro and TI-M ePA Fachdienst, ensuring full compliance and seamless integration.
ESS Pro for TI-M delivers a comprehensive backend infrastructure, including the Homeserver, Messenger Proxy, and a dedicated Federation List Service. Managed and maintained directly by Element, the solution benefits from Long-Term Support (LTS) versions. These include backported critical security updates and regular updates to align with evolving gematik requirements, avoiding the need for recertification.
In addition, ESS for TI-M includes Advanced Security Advisories and Level 3 support, with service levels aligned to gematik’s stringent SLA requirements. This ensures a high degree of reliability and operational continuity for healthcare providers.
Designed to support TI-Messenger providers, ESS for TI-M delivers three major benefits:
- Scale to massive size effortlessly and automatically
- Save resources and reduce operational cost
- Ease operations and improve operational stability
Significant resource savings
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 to an equivalent implementation based on Community Synapse.
|
FOSS Synapse
|
Synapse Pro
|
The TI-Messenger Proxy within ESS Pro for TI-M is built on the proven foundation of the Element Secure Border Gateway. Developed in lean Rust architecture, it offers memory safety and concurrency without data races, resulting in an exceptionally efficient idle memory footprint of just 10 MB—compared to 800 MB in gematik’s reference implementation. The proxy fully implements all gematik requirements for both TI-M ePA and TI-M Pro and includes a Federation List Service. Designed for modern cloud environments, it supports automatic, load-dependent scaling, ensures high availability, and is deployed using Kubernetes with GitOps and Helm charts for streamlined operations and continuous delivery.
ESS Pro for TI-Messenger comes in different sizes!
ESS Pro for TI-Messenger can be used to support massive deployments (TI-M ePA), supporting millions of end-users. It can also be used to support thousands of high-performance small hosts (TI-M Pro). Whatever the use case, ESS Pro for TI-M delivers operational efficiencies and significant savings
|
TI-M ePA (for large hosts) For health insurance companies and other huge deployments.
|
TI-M Pro (for small hosts) For service providers supporting hundreds of healthcare organisations.
|
