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Official launch of the ISy-CARE Community

Kick-off event for the ISy-CARE community

The ISy-CARE Community team

On 17 January 2025, the Institute Industrial IT (inIT) of the Technische Hochschule OWL (TH OWL) participated in the kick-off event of the ISy-CARE Community at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences (HSBI). The ISy-CARE Community is one of 20 innovation communities nationwide that are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The ISy-CARE project aims to improve the health and quality of life of people in the OWL region, thus offering a strategic approach to regional development that strengthens the transfer of knowledge between research and practice and helps to align social and technical innovations more closely with demand.

The ISy-CARE Community has been working since 1 January 2025, focusing on the integration of socio-technical systems in the health-oriented care of people with rehabilitation and support needs. The innovation community aims to establish excellent research on care and care technologies and put it “on the road”.

The ISy-CARE research project addresses different target groups. On the one hand, patients should be able to live better lives thanks to socio-technical innovations, while on the other hand, the burden on (nursing) professionals and physicians should be reduced by intelligent systems. Furthermore, the research activities focus on institutions that want to increase their attractiveness for recruiting new specialists and managers or work more profitably, as well as on social systems that, for example, should enable longer care in a domestic context through earlier discharge from inpatient care.

“Our goal is to unlock the potential of intelligent systems for greater participation and to overcome obstacles such as a lack of knowledge in the context of health care, in order to improve the patient's journey through the confusing health care system," says Prof. Volker Lohweg, head of the inIT working group Discrete Systems.

In addition to the Center for Innovation in the Health Economy OWL (ZIG), the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences (HSBI) with the CareTech OWL research association, the v. Bodelschwinghschen Stiftungen Bethel, inIT of TH OWL, the Klinikum Lippe and Connext GmbH are represented in the innovation community. Further partners from practice, science and industry will be involved in various sub-projects, including Bielefeld University and Paderborn University.

inIT is responsible for the transfer tasks in the field of care data with a sub-project. Care data includes all technologies in the care sector that address the optimisation of care and rehabilitation using exclusively data and software-based technical solutions. These include digitisation concepts, the integration of app-based solutions, data analysis using Machine Learning and digital assistance systems supported by Artificial Intelligence methods.