SORMAS-ÖGD
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SORMAS-Podcast
Season 1: “More Efficient SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic Management with SORMAS.” (German)
In our SORMAS Audio Guide, experts offer you practical tips and background knowledge on our contact tracking tool. Get to know the advantages and functions of SORMAS better, benefit from the experiences of other health departments and also relieve your daily work.
“What is the benefit of SORMAS?”
Prof. Dr. Melanie Brinkmann, virologist and head of the viral immunomodulation research group, and Prof. Dr. Gérard Krause, physician and head of the epidemiology research group at the HZI, explain the benefits and advantages of SORMAS for pandemic management.
“Field Reports from Health Departments.”
Dr. Anja Hauri, Head of the Hygiene Department of the Health Office in Giessen, reports first-hand how SORMAS has proven itself in practice.
The authority in Giessen was among the first institutions to use SORMAS for pandemic management.
“Training and safety”
What does it mean to relaunch SORMAS? What steps are necessary? And what else is there to consider? Prof. Dr. Gérard Krause, physician and co-developer of SORMAS, and Christin Walter, project manager in the SORMAS team and responsible for training and support, talk about this.
“What is SORMAS based on?”
How will the pandemic evolve and how can a digital management tool like SORMAS support this? How did the development of the software actually come about?
These and other questions are answered by virologist Prof. Dr. Melanie Brinkmann and Prof. Dr. Gérard Krause.
What is SORMAS?
Watch the video (german) to learn all you need to know about SORMAS: How it helps manage the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic more efficiently, improve contact tracing, and reduce peak workloads in the health department in the process.
All about SORMAS
Benefits for health departments
Technical information

You, the Public Health Service (ÖGD) workers, are critical to getting a handle on the pandemic. I would like to thank you very much for your commitment. To make your work easier, we have adapted the SORMAS software for the Corona situation in Germany. Ich weiß, dass der Umstieg auf eine neue Software in einer angespannten Zeit wie dieser sicher nicht einfach ist. But experience shows that SORMAS quickly makes your work more effective after a short period of familiarization. Take advantage of the offer. It will help you.
Jens Spahn, ehem. Bundesgesundheitsminister
Practical test passed
SORMAS is already used in many countries for infectious disease surveillance. On the occasion of the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014, SORMAS was initially intended to support epidemic control in structurally weak regions as an open-source eHealth tool. Since then, SORMAS has been continuously developed and adapted for numerous infectious diseases – such as currently for the management of the COVID 19 pandemic.
From user to user: What our SORMAS supporters say
Of course, I cannot judge the case development and the deployment status of Sormas in other counties, but I am of the opinion that [194 Tagesfälle mit 80-100% Befüllung] would only have worked in our case today without Sormas with a serious loss of data.
Since the changeover on 17.05.2021, I have not once had to regret the decision to use Sormas productively. We have reached the point where we also have the complete administration in Sormas.
What used to be possible with time-consuming maintenance of an Excel list + serial letters is now done exclusively in Sormas.
The Mitte Health Department is the first district in Berlin to work with SORMAS since April 2020. We are in constant exchange with the HZI and the cooperation works excellently. Requests for changes that can benefit many counties and states are quickly implemented together. The pandemic event can be optimally recorded and processed via SORMAS.
We are able to do all this because we are very well supported by the HZI and Netzlink. Here I must especially praise the work of the first level support (HZI like Netzlink), because they not only record problems, but also contribute to the solution of the respective problem and get in touch regularly.
SORMAS is very user-friendly, clear and almost self-explanatory. With the SORMAS program, we can now track infection cases digitally. This facilitates a lot.
We hope that other health departments will follow suit so that we can all take advantage of a common solution. This also improves communication with each other.
The introduction of the interface between SORMAS and SurvNet has eliminated duplicate entry into two systems. As a result, we have become faster in entering cases and errors in the entry have been reduced to a minimum, which saves a lot of time on site in the follow-up work during inspections and corrections, but also enables more timely forwarding of detailed data to the LGA/RKI. Although the development of the interface is still not complete, we are very satisfied with the result and the resulting reduction in workload.
Since we introduced SORMAS, the individual processes can be handled in a fully comprehensive, standardized and paperless manner. Targeted analyses and detailed surveys are possible in real time.
I would choose to switch to SORMAS again and again. During the changeover, we were closely supported by the HZI, so that SORMAS was ready to work from one day to the next. Since then, we have been able to speed up our processes in the health department immensely, saving time and personnel in processing cases.
In 4 steps to SORMAS
We want to make your implementation of SORMAS as easy, smooth and fast as possible. Our diagram provides you with a transparent overview of the process.
Contact directly
To use SORMAS, contact the hotline of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and the Academy of Public Health:
+49 (0) 531 / 6181 1109
With SORMAS your data remains protected
SORMAS is made available to each health office in compliance with data protection regulations and is operated on an individual, virtual server at the ITZ Bund. Apart from authorized offices of the public health service (ÖGD), no one has access to the collected data – not even the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research.

The SORMAS@DEMIS project group
SORMAS@DEMIS is a collaboration of many partners to integrate diverse systems and network case and person management for COVID-19 with the goal of reducing the burden on health departments. For this purpose, existing systems are interconnected: SORMAS, Climedo Symptom Diary, DEMIS and SurvNet@RKI.
Q&A with Prof. Gérard Krause
Gérard Krause is a professor of infectious disease epidemiology. In the video, the trained physician and epidemiologist answers the following questions:
- How does SORMAS specifically help public health departments?
- Which interfaces are integrated and how does the software help with data networking?
- How is the training for using the software going?
- How does the software update work?
- How has SORMAS already proven itself before Corona?
COVID-19 specific process models for case reporting, infection progression and diagnostics.
Deposit of work processes - with appointment system, task catalog and reminder system
ongoing Updated epidemiological maps, chains of transmission, and process analyses.
Control of independent health monitoring of contact person through app (SB module).
IfSG- and DSGVO-compliant role and rights management regarding views and data processing
Available as desktop version (Chrome, Firefox) and as mobile networked Android version
Customized training for each health department (phone or web).
Networking through interactive webinars, user forum and podcasts
Trial version with fictitious data available for free on the website
Training videos for handling contacts and cases
User manual with info on general usage and admin applications
Interface according to RKI specifications ensures full synchronization with existing IfSG reporting software
Linking of cases and contact persons beyond the borders of counties & independent cities
Simultaneous availability of data at municipal, state (and, if applicable, federal) level according to responsibilities
Better capture and contain infection numbers

Contact overview
The "Contact overview" shows you distribution and statistics for stored contact persons and the respective quarantine status.

Monitoring overview
Statistics and data from cases you can view in real time in the "Monitoring overview". Various indicators are calculated automatically. The epidemiological curve shows you - broken down into categories - how compose the cases in total and over a time window. The case status map shows the geographic distribution of cases.

Representation of infection chains
To evaluate the spread and the measures to be taken, the automatic display of infection chains and related indicators will help you.

Digital symptom diary
Successful contact person management also requires daily documentation of the health status of affected persons. The Climedo symptom diary makes the task easier:
- Contact persons document their symptoms digitally on their own. This eliminates calls by health department personnel.
- Continuous synchronization between SORMAS and Climedo symptom diary.
- Visual representation of the digital symptom diary directly in the SORMAS user interface.
- Efficient processes ensure time savings of up to 80 percent.