How can digitalisation improve healthcare and redesign care pathways? This question was one of the focal points of the InnovationFestival 2025 at the Bielefeld Campus. The festival brings together research, business and society and shows how scientific findings and new technologies can be put into practice – from digital production and new materials to innovations in healthcare.
The DATIpilot innovation community ISyCARE OWL – with the participation of inIT – presented the current status and the start-up projects that have been launched in the areas of digital health data and rehabilitation.
Future-oriented transfer structures for health and medicine
ISyCARE stands for Integrated Socio-Technical Systems for User-Centred Care and is one of 20 DATIpilot innovation communities nationwide. The initiative brings together research, practice and industry to jointly develop innovations in healthcare and open up new avenues for transferring research findings into care practice.
Find out more about ISyCARE: https://isy-care.de
inIT projects in focus: CareDataSpaces OWL and PD Assist+
At the exhibition stand and in the accompanying specialist programme, members of the Discrete Systems research group at inIT, led by Prof. Dr. Volker Lohweg, presented two practical projects from the field of digital health:
- CareDataSpaces OWL – presented by Frauke Wiegräbe – aims to create a regional data space for health data. Using Parkinson's disease as a case study, it was shown how secure, cross-sector data exchange can improve care and enable data-based analyses, for example using artificial intelligence methods.
- PD Assist+ – presented by Patrick Gaudl – supports patients with Parkinson's disease in their everyday lives through app-based documentation of symptoms and therapy progress. The application promotes communication between caregivers and patients, thus contributing to personalised, digital care.
Workshop: Innovation as an opportunity for the OWL health region
Another highlight was the workshop ‘Innovation in health and social services as an opportunity – Take it ISy(CARE)!’ Participants discussed how social and technical innovations can be successfully transferred into healthcare practice. The discussion also focused on structural requirements, the qualification of skilled workers and the establishment of sustainable transfer structures for the OWL region.
Innovations from OWL for the healthcare of tomorrow
‘The InnovationFestival offered a great opportunity to present our projects to a wide audience and to strengthen the exchange between research, practice and care,’ says Frauke Wiegräbe. ‘With CareDataSpaces OWL and PD Assist+, we want to show how digital innovations can support and further develop healthcare in the OWL region.’