Social distancing is very necessary in the current situation. It is currently difficult for people who have to see doctors to maintain this. A Berlin start-up company has come up with an e-prescription prototype to help. The Berlin start-up Spherity has developed an identity prototype that is relevant for people who have to take medication and wish to maintain social distance.

The CEO of Spherity, Carsten Stöcker, said
“We see a great opportunity when it comes to social distance to get decentralized IDs out the door.
People interact with smartphones, but governments and medical practices interact with the existing infrastructure.
That means we have to bridge that gap.”

The basis of the e-prescription is the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), with which various attributes of the digital identity can be managed decentrally. In the summer of last year, laws on the digitalisation of pharmacies were passed in Germany. Spherity, along with 40,000 other participants, took part in the virtual WirVsVirus hackathon organized by the German federal government.
Stöcker says that his mother inspired him to write an e-prescription. She doesn’t want to go to crowded doctor’s offices just to renew a prescription. Until now, however, there has been a lack of confidence in the verification process, which is why patients always want to renew prescriptions personally.

In a wallet that doctors can access, patients have to enter their digital fingerprints. Once the KYC (know-your-customer) credentials are matched with the records, an electronic prescription can be issued. The next step is to connect the patient’s wallet to an online pharmacy.