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Giesecke & Devrient Receives Electronic Health Card Certification for Trial Regions


Munich/Berlin, December 5, 2006 – Ever since last December, the laboratories of Gematik, the company founded by the German government to establish and administer the infrastructure of the nation's forthcoming electronic health care insurance cards, have been testing the smart cards of various manufacturers to assess their functionality and compliance with specifications. Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) has become one of the first smart card manufacturers to pass the tests and be given the green light to issue its health care smart cards in the designated test regions.

The electronic health care card is the driving force behind the modernization of the German health system. It will interconnect 80 million patients, 130,000 physicians in private practice, 55,000 dentists, over 2,000 hospitals, 21,000 pharmacies, and over 300 health insurance companies. The e-health care cards play a key role in the complex interaction of the various centralized and decentralized components of the overall telematics infrastructure.

The electronic health care card developed by G&D was tested by Gematik to ensure its compliance with the designated specs in addition to its functionality and interoperability. For example, the card must enable doctors to store electronic prescriptions and patients to get them filled at a pharmacy with no trouble at all.

Another condition for the limited certification was that the cards had to fulfill the corresponding requirements laid down by Germany's Federal Office for Security in Information Technology.

As a leading manufacturer of smart card solutions, G&D was actively involved in developing the standards for the electronic health insurance cards from the outset. “Our work with Gematik was very constructive throughout every phase of the project. We are pleased that G&D has become one of the first companies authorized to issue health care smart cards in the test regions. Beginning rollout of the cards as early as this December will mark the gradual implementation of our card-based health care system,” explains Hans Wolfgang Kunz, group executive for Giesecke & Devrient’s Government Solutions business unit.



About Giesecke & Devrient:
Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is a technology leader in the field of smart cards, providing smart card based solutions for telecommunications, electronic payment, health care, ID, transportation, and IT security (PKI). G&D is also a leading producer of banknotes and security documents and is dominant in the field of currency automation. Based in Munich, Germany, the G&D group has subsidiaries and joint ventures around the world. In fiscal 2005, the Group employed some 7,500 people and generated revenue of €1.24 billion. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.gi-de.com.



Contact:
Andrea Bockholt
Press Manager/Corporate Communications
Giesecke & Devrient GmbH, Prinzregentenstr. 159, D-81677 Munich Tel. [phone], Fax [phone], Mobile: [phone] mailto:[e-mail] http://www.gi-de.com