Shaping the future of telecare and telemedicine together
How can tele-care and telemedicine be sustainably integrated into healthcare? This question was the focus of the event ‘TeleVision – care at the forefront, not just on the sidelines’ which brought together stakeholders from the fields of care, healthcare, academia, politics and business in Karlsruhe at the end of June.
The event was organised by the Internal link opens in the same window:Care and Technology Lab (IMTT) at Furtwangen University in collaboration with the Diakonisches Werk Baden as part of a partnership between the External link opens in a new window:Future of Care cluster and the "pulsnetz.de – People and Technology in the Community" project. The goal was to promote cross-sectoral exchange and jointly develop perspectives for the future design of telecare and telemedicine services. Representatives from outpatient and inpatient care, hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, integration assistance, academia, local governments, associations, politics and funding bodies, as well as companies and providers of tele-nursing solutions, discussed the opportunities and challenges of digital care concepts. The focus was on questions regarding integration into existing care processes, cross-sector collaboration, and the organisational, technical and financial prerequisites for the long-term establishment of successful solutions. In interprofessional workshops, experiences from various areas of care were brought together. It became clear that the success of tele-nursing and telemedicine applications depends less on the technology itself and more on its implementation in a way that meets actual needs.
The event was supported by experts from the Baden-Württemberg State Competence Center for Nursing & Digitalisation (PflegeDigital@BW), the Baden-Württemberg Telemedicine Coordination Office, and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Integration. The event impressively demonstrated how important dialogue between academia, healthcare practice, politics and industry is for jointly advancing digital transformation in the healthcare sector. The discussions made it clear that, in particular, early needs assessment, the involvement of all relevant stakeholders, user-friendly technologies, appropriate organisational frameworks, and − last but not least − sustainable financing models are crucial for successfully integrating innovations into standard care over the long term.