Charité project honoured with Ideas for Impact health award

Photo Credit: Home visit to a patient as part of the Stay@Home – Treat@Home project © Steffen Kayser

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Care network and digital tools support health care for people in need of care

Berlin, 22 February, 2024

Demographic change is presenting society with major challenges: More and more older people have to receive medical care from fewer and fewer specialists. This is where the Stay@Home – Treat@Home project, led by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, comes in. The project aims to improve the care of older people through a closely coordinated, round-the-clock network of outpatient and inpatient services. The project team has been awarded the Ideas for Impact health prize worth 100,000 euros. The award will be presented by the Bosch Health Campus on behalf of the Robert Bosch Stiftung this evening in Berlin.

In this project, which is funded by the Joint Federal Committee’s Innovation Fund, various co-operation partners are working together to make healthcare for people in need of care even safer and more efficient. Through continuous monitoring and care using state-of-the-art technologies and telemedicine, the project enables early intervention in the event of health problems before they lead to serious complications. Hospital stays can thus be reduced.

Setting the course for the future today

“The award-winning project is pioneering and sustainable. The concept not only relieves the burden on our medical care system, but also increases the quality of life of patients,” says Prof Mark Dominik Alscher, Managing Director of the Bosch Health Campus.

“We are delighted to receive this award! It is a confirmation of our work and an additional incentive to continue our efforts to improve healthcare. The ageing society is a challenge for medicine. People are getting older and need medical care. On the other hand, we have fewer and fewer specialists available to do the work. We have to set the course for this today,” explain the two project leaders Prof Rajan Somasundaram, Medical Director of the Central Emergency Department at the Benjamin Franklin Campus, and Prof Nils Lahmann from the Department of Geriatrics and Geriatric Medicine at Charité.

Digital health diary as a basis for all network partners

The central component of the project is a digital interactive health diary that can be accessed by carers or relatives of people receiving care at home. This enables data protection-compliant documentation of health data in the home environment. Among other things, it contains medication schedules, allergies, current diagnoses, but also emergency contact details and living wills.

Both doctors and carers have access to the health diary. If the state of health changes, the person responsible can take action and inform the GP practice. For acute cases outside of GP surgery hours, there are support options from other network partners and a telemedical connection to the Charité emergency department. Important medical information is then immediately available digitally to all those involved in medical care.

Photo Credit: Telemedical consultation in the Charité emergency department as part of the Stay@Home – Treat@Home project © Steffen Kayser

Holistic, patient-centred approach

The jury of six experts who selected the project particularly praised the holistic approach that combines medical expertise with state-of-the-art technology and a patient-centred approach. Stay@Home – Treat@Home thus takes a significant step forward in the development of medical and nursing care. In order to spread the project and find imitators, the Bosch Health Campus will provide a further 80,000 euros for transfer services after the award ceremony.

In addition to the Charité, represented by the Central Emergency Department at the Benjamin Franklin Campus and the Clinic for Geriatrics and Geriatric Medicine, the following are involved as consortium partners: the Berlin Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe e. V, Malteser Hilfsdienst gGmbH, Dr Irmgard Landgraf (project-supervising GP), bildau GmbH, HCMB – Institute for Health Care Systems Management Berlin eG, the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, GWQ Service Plus AG (company and guild health insurance funds) and, in the near future, Techniker Krankenkasse. The project is scheduled to run until September 2026, with the intervention phase starting in October 2023.