The Ministry of Health announced today, Friday, September 18, the Ministry of Health, just a few days after the death of Giorgos Mazonakis and the revelations regarding the operations of the private clinic in Kolonaki where he underwent plasmapheresis.
Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis presented the platform MedWatch, through which the ministry and the medical associations will be able to identify and monitor online posts by doctors advertising medical services and treatments. At the same time, the bill provides a way for citizens to find out about the licenses held by a medical practice and the procedures that are permitted to be performed there.
The Mazonakis case brought the problem to light
The discussion about the regulatory framework began following the death of Giorgos Mazonakis. According to reports, the venue in Kolonaki had a license a general pathology clinic, where bloodletting was not permitted.
The Athens Medical Association has submitted to the relevant authorities a record of the inspections it had conducted at that location, clarifying that No permission had ever been granted for plasmapheresis. According to the information that was made public, the machine in question had not been identified during a previous inspection.
The case, therefore, has raised a broader question: How can a medical procedure that is not covered by a medical practice’s license be performed without being detected in a timely manner by the regulatory authorities?;
Georgiadis also acknowledges the government's responsibility
The Minister of Health himself has acknowledged that there is an aspect of state responsibility in this case. In remarks on September 15, he stated that the government failed to detect in a timely manner what was happening at that particular clinic, while also noting that the final determination of the criminal liability of those involved will be made by the courts.
The issue has already reached the Parliament. Four female members of Parliament submitted a question requesting information on the number of such private centers, the inspections that have been carried out, the cases of violations that have been identified, and the current regulatory framework.
MedWatch and the Question of the Next Day
The new digital platform aims to create an additional layer of oversight, particularly with regard to the online promotion of treatments and services that may not be covered by the licenses of the clinics in question.
However, the Mazonakis case has also brought back into the spotlight the issue of on-site inspections. The discussion now centers not only on what a doctor advertises online, but also on who actually oversees what goes on behind the doors of a private medical practice.
And that is perhaps the key question raised by this case: If it took a death to expose the system’s shortcomings, is a new digital tool sufficient, or is a more comprehensive strengthening of the health system’s oversight mechanisms required?;
The judicial investigation into the Mazonakis case is ongoing, and the criminal liability of those involved has not yet been definitively determined.
Medwatch: How Many Doctors Were “Caught” During the First Rollout – How It Works
From the traditional, sample-based inspection of medical offices to a form systematic digital monitoring is attempting to pass the medwatch, a system that was presented to the Ministry of Health with the aim of identifying, in a timely manner, facilities that show signs of violations.
Medwatch - on the aftermath of the case involving the death of Giorgos Mazonakis which brought to light many systemic flaws and gaps in the oversight mechanisms—was not designed to replace on-site inspections or to automatically impose sanctions.
Its basic function is different: It scans the digital presence of medical offices, clinics, beauty centers, and other facilities, looks for specific signs of violations, and alerts auditors to where they should focus their attention.
The need for such a tool is also reflected in the figures from the presentation released by the Ministry of Health.
As he notes, there are approximately 20,000 licensed primary health care providers, while more than 16,500 are in Attica.
At the same time, the pilot mapped 1,630 non-medical businesses –such as beauty salons, wellness centers, and spas– from which 161 were found to be advertising medical procedures.
The current framework stipulates that each Medical Association must conduct an annual audit of the 10% of primary health care providers.
As noted in the same presentation, however, an on-site inspection captures what is happening at a facility only at that specific moment. In contrast, online advertising leaves a permanent and, under certain conditions, verifiable footprint.
How MedWatch Works
The system draws data exclusively from publicly accessible sources. These include the Athens Medical Association’s membership registry, Google Places, and OpenStreetMap, the websites of these organizations, the ad libraries of Meta, Google, and TikTok, public social media posts, as well as booking and telemedicine platforms.
According to the presentation, No patient data is collected.
The process begins by capturing a webpage or an advertisement and creating a screenshot. The content is then classified using a language model and keywords to identify the medical procedures and claims being promoted.
Next, they are compared against specific rules, and ultimately the following are created: «potential findings», along with the relevant excerpt and supporting evidence.
Each structure is then color-coded – red, yellow, green, or gray – and is displayed on a special dashboard for the auditor. No final decision, however, is made automatically.
Which clinics will be flagged as «red»?»
A key feature of Medwatch is that it combines the type of facility and the type of medical procedure it advertises or claims to perform.
Structures are classified from U0, which applies to non-medical businesses such as beauty and wellness centers, through U5 for hospitals. Similarly, medical procedures are divided into categories P-A through P-D, depending on where they can be held.
For example, a procedure in the P-A category may be performed in a doctor’s office specializing in the relevant field, while a P-C procedure requires a clinic or hospital with a blood bank. The presentation specifically notes that Plasmapheresis is classified as P-C and is not intended to be performed in a general medical office.
The system checks for a total of eleven categories of potential violations. Among other things, it checks whether a procedure requires a higher-level facility, whether it is performed by a non-physician or outside the practitioner’s specialty, whether claims are made regarding «miraculous» treatments or detox programs, whether prescription drugs are advertised, «before and after» prices and photos, as well as undeclared collaborations with influencers.
It also investigates potential unreported medical equipment, the issuance of medical certificates without an examination, the use of the term «medical» without a license to operate, and cases of intermediaries who take a percentage of medical fees.
Red, yellow, green, and gray
Color coding serves as a prioritization mechanism.
A structure can transition to the red when a serious violation has been confirmed, when the business in question is unlicensed and advertises medical procedures, or when it has a prior penalty and a new violation has been identified.
The yellow This refers to cases that require further review, such as violations of medical advertising regulations or discrepancies in medical specialties. "Green" designates licensed facilities with no outstanding findings and that have undergone a recent inspection, while "gray" designates those that have not yet been scanned or do not have a digital presence.
The Medwatch team itself clarifies that Every finding remains a «candidate» until it is reviewed by a human and does not, in and of itself, constitute a sanction.
How many doctors did he “catch” during the first implementation?
In the pilot project conducted in Attica, the following were recorded: 8,563 facilities and 9,838 individual pieces of content were examined, of which 8,055 were paid advertisements.
The system produced 5,069 potential findings in 655 structures. Of the total number of structures mapped, 231 were marked red and 424 were marked yellow.
Specifically for medical clinics, 5,706 facilities were recorded: 50 are marked as red, 274 as yellow, and 49 as green, while for 5,333, the required image had not been completed or no digital presence had been detected.
According to the presentation, red-flag cases include indications of procedures outside a physician’s specialty or procedures that require hospital facilities. Yellow findings are dominated by issues related to medical advertising, such as prices and testimonials, as well as cases of laser treatments not cross-referenced with the registry of declared equipment.
The results, however, require careful analysis. During the two rounds of human validation across 98 structures, the number of cases initially classified as potentially red was reduced from 219 to 72. The presentation emphasizes that all findings from the pilot are still preliminary and that the classification of each facility remains an estimate as long as there is no full official access to the relevant registries.
The «file» that the auditor will have in front of him
For each suspicious case, Medwatch saves a screenshot of the ad or website, the date it was captured, a link to the source, the advertiser’s details, and the excerpt of the text that triggered the relevant rule.
It also records which reviewer examined the finding and which reviewer confirmed it. Thus, even if a disputed advertisement is later removed from the internet, the evidence remains stored. A total of 1,140 such snapshots had already been created in the pilot program.
The auditor will be able to view the facilities on a map, filter by municipality, specialty, and type of finding, and open the complete file for each medical practice. At the same time, there will be an «audit queue,» through which each case will pass through successive stages: from a potential finding to confirmation, rejection, referral, or closure of the case.
With this in mind, Medwatch does not attempt to turn the algorithm into a «digital inspector.» The goal is for it to function as hazard radar, so that the limited oversight mechanisms can identify which clinics and facilities show the strongest indications that they require immediate inspection.
The crucial next step, however, is for the ministry to formally implement the tool and link it to official registries. The presentation on September 18 concerns pilot program and proposal to the Ministry of Health, not a control mechanism that has already been established by law.
