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Statutory and private health and long-term care insurers funded services worth around €450 billion in 2025. At the same time, case numbers, the shortage of skilled workers, regulatory requirements, and administrative burdens are all increasing. According to the Federal Ministry of Health, statutory health and social long-term care insurers face a combined funding gap of around €26 billion by 20271. With several hundred million benefit cases per year, efficiency gains per transaction represent a considerable potential. Telekom/T-Systems and the HealthTech company caery are addressing precisely this: using secure AI, they automate benefits verification, billing, and payment. Specialist departments are relieved of their workload, insured individuals benefit from faster decisions and fewer queries, and service providers are relieved through more efficient billing processes.
"We are making benefits verification future-proof: moving away from retrospective control toward rule-based decisions and active management. Health insurers can deploy their professional expertise more effectively, reduce administrative costs, and pay out benefits more quickly," says Dennis Beste, CEO of caery. "T Cloud Public provides us with a sovereign and scalable foundation for this. Health insurers can thereby deploy solidarity-financed funds more effectively—for the benefit of the system and the insured."
"For health insurance companies, what matters most today is speed, efficiency, trust, and cost-effectiveness. This is precisely where our T Cloud Public comes in: it is the foundation for sovereign and scalable AI applications in healthcare, such as those from caery. Security, compliance, and speed go hand in hand."
caery operates an intelligent software in T Cloud Public that reviews billing statements and derives auditable decision proposals from them. The solution complements existing systems via standardized interfaces and automates the entire service process chain. Care budgets are automatically reviewed, for example, subsidies are paid out in compliance with regulations, or anomalies in billing statements are detected at an early stage. Clear-cut cases are processed immediately, while complex matters are specifically handed over to the responsible experts.
Many health insurers already automate standard processes. caery extends these capabilities, particularly for benefits and review processes that have until now required significant manual effort. To achieve this, case data is combined with additional review signals and relevant contextual information, then evaluated in a structured manner. This enables rule-based preliminary decisions instead of downstream controls. As a result, specialist departments gain time for consultation and individual support. In addition, health insurers can identify billing errors, irregularities, and potential misuse before payment is made.
caery extends existing core and specialist systems via defined interfaces (APIs), without requiring deep-reaching interventions in the existing IT landscape. New digital processes can be introduced more quickly and regulatory requirements—such as the upcoming Care Reorganization Act (PNOG)2—can be implemented more easily.
"Statutory requirements, fund-specific guidelines, and contractual resolutions are stored as machine-readable rules (Law-as-Code) and can be updated flexibly. This allows new requirements to be integrated into existing processes significantly faster," says Beste.
The technological foundation is the T Cloud Public of Telekom/T-Systems. It meets the highest requirements for data protection, security, and compliance, and offers the scalability necessary for processing large volumes of data in healthcare. Operation in European data centers supports digital sovereignty and control over sensitive health data for the regulation-compliant and productive use of AI.
The digitalization of health and care insurers offers two key levers: greater productivity in administration and better management of services. According to the Lünendonk Study 20262, 91 percent of the statutory health insurers surveyed want to digitalize and automate their administrative processes, while 87 percent plan to deploy AI-supported process automation.
"Through the widespread use of intelligent solutions like ours, statutory health insurers can leverage existing efficiency potential even more effectively and unlock up to 10 billion euros in additional savings annually," explains Dennis Beste. "Around five billion through optimized processes in specialist departments and the prevention of erroneous or abusive benefit expenditures, and a further five billion through data-based, more needs-oriented allocation of available resources. This creates genuine financial headroom for better care for insured individuals."
caery is a partner in the TechBoost start-up and innovation program of Telekom/T-Systems. Through TechBoost, the Bonn-based telecommunications group supports young companies with cloud infrastructure, technical know-how, and access to sales and partner networks. Telekom/T-Systems and caery aim to drive the digitalization of the healthcare sector in a sustainable manner.
1 Questions and answers on the GKV-Beitragssatzstabilisierungsgesetz, Federal Ministry of Health, July 2026, www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de
2 Pflegeneuordnungsgesetz, Federal Ministry of Health, June 2026, www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de
2 Digital transformation in statutory health insurance, Lünendonk, August 2026, www.luenendonk.de
