GerNe Digital!

With a population of around 600,000, Dortmund is one of the largest cities in North Rhine-Westphalia. Like many other cities in the Ruhr region, it has an above-average proportion of elderly, multimorbid and chronically ill patients who require geriatric care. Adequate geriatric treatment requires cross-sectoral interaction between all those involved in the care process. However, due to the separation of the sectors of outpatient and inpatient care as well as home care, these areas are organized and managed separately. This leads to disruptions in care, which can result in uncoordinated coexistence of indication-specific therapies with the consequence of overuse, underuse or misuse.

A large number of digital solutions currently exist. In NRW, several projects have already been implemented to implement an electronic case file (EFA) as a doctor-managed medical record, which is intended to ensure intersectoral networking in relation to specific medical cases and scenarios. The implementation of digitization strategies in nursing is still in its infancy. It is currently still mostly limited to the use of mobile devices, which improve work processes such as client management, care documentation, maintenance of patient files or route planning. The project initiative "PiQ - Care in the Neighborhood" represents an important first step, supporting the networking of all stakeholders in the neighborhood around people in need of care and their relatives.

There are therefore currently at least two concepts that operate independently of each other - initiatives towards a doctor-led medical record on the one hand and projects relating to the digitalization of care including the home situation on the other, which, however, do not allow the exchange of information with the current state of the art. By linking the two worlds, the aim is to create a seamless information and process chain geared towards patients and their needs, which will lead to a significant improvement in the geriatric care process and thus increase the quality of life of elderly patients. This process requires a data protection concept that meets the legal requirements and special protection in the medical context for accessing and storing data.