Sovereign Public Health Infrastructure: The Public Health Authority of Frankfurt Becomes a Global Red Hat Success Story
A German Public Sector Story with Global Reach
We have exciting news to share: Red Hat has published a new global customer success story featuring the Public Health Authority of Frankfurt am Main (Gesundheitsamt Frankfurt am Main) – and VSHN as the platform engineering partner behind it.
After HIN (Health Info Net) became a global Red Hat success story earlier this year, this is now the second time within a few months that a VSHN customer project has been recognized on Red Hat’s global stage. And once again, the topic at the center of it is digital sovereignty in healthcare.
But this story adds a new dimension: it shows how sovereign, open source, cloud-native infrastructure works in the public sector – built for one of the largest public health authorities in Germany, funded by the EU, and shared openly for others to reuse.
Why This Project Matters
The Gesundheitsamt Frankfurt am Main is one of the largest public health authorities in Germany, with 300 employees across 8 departments. Its mission covers everything from pre-school health screenings and vaccination programs to hygiene inspections and public health emergencies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a structural problem became painfully visible: the 25 public health authorities in the state of Hesse were working with heterogeneous systems, workflows, and configurations. Sharing data between organizations was difficult – which made tracking infection chains harder than it needed to be.
The answer was not another isolated IT project. With support from the Public Health Authority of Frankfurt am Main, the state health ministry secured EUR 24 million in EU funding to modernize the digital infrastructure of public health in Hesse.
The result is GA-Lotse: an open source platform developed by cronn GmbH and run by VSHN as a managed service on Red Hat OpenShift.
Federated by Design: Sovereignty Down to the Municipality
What makes GA-Lotse special is its architecture. Instead of enforcing a single way of working on 25 different authorities, the team designed a federated, multitenant system.
Each district in Hesse operates its own customizable instance of the platform – with full ownership of its own applications and sensitive data. No private or unauthorized data is shared between departments. At the same time, the state can generate anonymized, aggregated reports for evidence-based decision making.
“We handle people’s most private and sensitive data – their individual health records. This requires strict compliance with data protection and privacy laws, so we have a high bar for data security,”
says Bianca Kastl, Product Owner at the Public Health Authority of Frankfurt am Main.
The platform was built with zero trust architecture and a modular design:
- 21 modules and 8 separate PostgreSQL databases from the VSHN marketplace
- Redis for caching and Keycloak for identity and access management
- A service mesh with standard applications for user management, communication, and calendars
- Passkeys instead of passwords and nontraceable IDs to prevent unauthorized data access
- Hosting on Exoscale, a European cloud provider, for GDPR compliance and data sovereignty
Personal IDs are separated from medical records, and all data collected for reporting is anonymized and encrypted. A citizen getting a vaccination can be confident that the team cannot see their full medical history.
From Tender to Production in 3 Months
Public sector IT projects are not exactly famous for their speed. This one was different.
The tender was awarded in August 2024 – and the platform went live just 3 months later. The partnership between VSHN, Red Hat, and Exoscale allowed the team to deliver the platform in days and spend the remaining time on deployment, integration, and testing. That speed was not just nice to have: delivery within a year was a hard requirement to secure the EU funding.
“GA-Lotse and VSHN share a common foundation: openness, transparency, collaboration, open source, cloud-native technology, and the highest regulatory standards. I’m proud to support the digital transformation of such a vital part of our society together with our partners.”
says Aarno Aukia, Co-Founder of VSHN.
A key factor: the public health authorities did not need to become Kubernetes experts. VSHN manages the platform and provides Day 2 operations, so the teams can focus on their actual work.
“Thanks to VSHN and Red Hat, we don’t need to train our teams to carry out complex Kubernetes infrastructure management. They can focus on serving their departments and leave maintenance and development to the experts.”
says Bianca Kastl.
Real Impact on Public Health
GA-Lotse is not a pilot project. It is in production and used by several regions across Hesse today.
Applications like the preschool health screening module replace paper-based processes and help carry out 7,000 health checks and 45,000 dental screenings per year more efficiently. Parents can book preschool health assessments digitally. Hygiene inspections of clinical and corporate settings are scheduled and tracked on the platform.
“Instead of changing how people work, we built a platform that works for them. This real-world solution reflects the realities of the public health system and makes it more efficient.”
says Kastl.
And there is one more aspect we find remarkable: the organization published the solution as open source, including on openCode.de – a first for the German public health sector. Other public health authorities can benefit from the same platform, without starting from scratch.
“Together, we are setting new standards for innovation, digital transformation, and digital sovereignty in public health,”
says Prof Dr. Peter Tinnermann, Head of the Public Health Authority of Frankfurt am Main.
What This Means Beyond Hesse
For us, this success story confirms a pattern we see across Europe: digital sovereignty is moving from theory to practice – and the public sector is leading some of the most ambitious projects.
GA-Lotse demonstrates that sovereign infrastructure for the public sector is achievable today:
- Open source instead of proprietary lock-in
- European cloud hosting instead of dependency on hyperscalers
- Federated data ownership instead of centralized data silos
- Managed platform operations instead of building scarce Kubernetes expertise in every authority
- Code published openly instead of duplicated public spending
Together with the HIN story from Switzerland, this shows that sovereign, cloud-native healthcare infrastructure is not a niche experiment anymore. It is running in production, in two countries, serving citizens every day.
A huge thank you to the Public Health Authority of Frankfurt am Main, cronn GmbH, Red Hat, and Exoscale for the excellent collaboration – and to all VSHNeers who made this project possible.
Download the Case Study
Public Health Authority of Frankfurt standardizes on Red Hat with VSHN
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Markus Speth
Marketing, Communications, People