ERIC

The ERIC (Enhanced Recovery after Intensive Care) project aims to improve the care of patients before and after intensive medical treatment. Around 2.1 million patients are treated in intensive care units in Germany every year and almost half a million are ventilated. Intensive care treatment often leads to critical and stressful long-term consequences for patients and their relatives. These include cognitive limitations, immobility and the need for long-term care. The aim of the project is to apply scientific findings consistently and to connect patients to a new telemedical intensive care network. These measures will increase patient safety during and after treatment and prevent long-term consequences.

Within the scope of the project, Fraunhofer FOKUS is responsible for the conception, specification and integration of the telemedical platform for networking the participating hospitals as well as the implementation of suitable data analysis methods. For this purpose, data from various decentralized sources will be virtually merged and evaluated under consideration of evidence-based criteria in order to provide physicians and nurses with information on the further design of individual patient treatment and the general optimization of treatment procedures. Feedback from those working in intensive care medicine is used to gradually optimize the algorithms used, using machine learning methods.

The three-year project was led by the Charité and financed by the Innovation Fund. Other project partners besides Fraunhofer FOKUS are the University of Munich, the Technical University of Berlin, the Ernst von Bergmann Klinik Bad Belzig gGmbH and the BARMER Ersatzkasse. The Innovation Fund was created by the German government to create better healthcare in Germany. The aim is to promote new health care models that go beyond standard care and are designed to improve the care of people with statutory health insurance. The Innovation Fund awards a total of 300 million euros annually throughout Germany.