SHAPTH and XWasser: What drinking water laboratories must change by 1 January 2027

What changes on 1 January 2027

Until now, each federal state, and sometimes each health authority, has had its own reporting route. Laboratories working across state boundaries maintain several interfaces in parallel, convert formats and adjust templates again after every change introduced by the EU or federal government.

SHAPTH puts an end to this. Led by the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety, all 16 federal states have established a shared exchange platform together with the XÖV data standard XWasser. Data is transmitted through a REST interface with plausibility checks and immediate confirmation of receipt, instead of sending a PDF attachment by email and hoping the file arrives.

An important distinction: SHAPTH does not replace specialist software or a LIMS. It is the channel, not the system. Your analytical work, master data and test reports stay where they are; the transmission route is what changes.

Who is affected by SHAPTH

All parties involved in drinking water monitoring are affected: Operators of water supply facilities, testing laboratories approved under the German Drinking Water Ordinance (TrinkwV), health authorities, and state and federal authorities.

The initial legal obligation rests with the operator, who must ensure that test results reach the competent authority. In practice, this is almost always carried out by the commissioned laboratory. This is precisely where the pressure arises that makes the transition a business issue for you: Health authorities now explicitly advise operators to agree on direct electronic transmission through SHAPTH/XWasser when commissioning a laboratory.

A laboratory that cannot submit through SHAPTH from 2027 therefore risks more than losing a reporting channel. It loses orders to laboratories that can.

Reporting without a LIMS – and what it costs

SHAPTH can also be used without a connected system. Test reports can be entered manually through the web interface. However, the project itself clearly describes this interface as an alternative for participants who do not yet have specialist software, rather than a full replacement.

The scope of a test report shows what “manual” means in practice. For each sample, the information to be entered includes:

• Sampling point, including category, subcategory, sampling outlet and medium
• Sampler, reason for testing and sampling time
• Sample receipt, and the start and end of laboratory activities
• Sample conformity assessment
• For each parameter, the test method, assessment of the test result, accreditation status and location of the laboratory activity

All this information already exists in your laboratory. Entering it a second time into a web interface may be acceptable for a handful of reports each year. With regular drinking water testing, it becomes permanent duplicate data entry, including the resulting transcription errors and without a record in your own system of which report arrived where and when.

Why the deadline is closer than it seems

1 January 2027 may sound as though there is time to prepare. However, the real work lies in the master data needed beforehand, rather than in the technical connection:

• Registration and access take time. Login to the production environment uses the business account. The laboratory’s SHAPTH ID, client ID and client secret must be available before any data can be transmitted.
• Facilities and sampling points are not created by the laboratory, but by operators and health authorities. You must obtain their IDs, which requires coordination with third parties who are also in the middle of the transition.
• Code lists and target values must be correct. Assessment is a mandatory field in SHAPTH: Your specifications must contain a suitable target value for every possible assessment option, otherwise the submission remains incomplete.
• Some federal states are starting earlier than the nationwide deadline. Baden-Württemberg, for example, considered a start in mid-2026 possible.

There is another factor: 1 January is not a gradual transition. From the 2027 reporting year, the old formats can no longer be used for data subject to mandatory reporting. Anyone who discovers missing mandatory fields on 2 January will have no fallback route.

Labordatenbank is SHAPTH-ready

Labordatenbank sends test reports directly to SHAPTH, without intermediate steps, duplicate data entry or custom development on your side.

Our LIMS experts Caroline Nolten and Miriam Weyden are members of the SHAPTH expert panel. This means laboratory requirements have directly influenced the design of the standard.

Still in time: Accelerated implementation

Laboratories that need a LIMS with SHAPTH integration by 2027 can use a structured, accelerated implementation of Labordatenbank. The process is planned around the deadline: Master data and parameters are transferred, SHAPTH fields are set up and transmission is configured – test in December 2026 and start live reporting on 1 January 2027.

To achieve this, the project should start as soon as possible .

If you already use a drinking water interface such as TEIS, Octoware or SEBAM, some mandatory SHAPTH fields can be transferred through an assisted reconciliation import. The work you have done over the years is not lost.