Following this ERIC (Enhanced Recovery after Intensive Care) has successfully completed a further project phase. In the three-year project, the Fraunhofer FOKUS Telehealth Technologies Innovation Center was responsible for the conception, specification and integration of the telemedical platform for networking the 14 participating hospitals – as well as the implementation of suitable data analysis methods.

About 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 ERIC project is to apply scientific findings consistently and to connect patients to a new telemedical intensive care network. These measures will increase patient safety and the quality of care during and after treatment and prevent long-term consequences.

Within the framework of the project, Fraunhofer FOKUS has virtually merged data from various decentralized sources and evaluated them under consideration of evidence-based criteria. Doctors and nursing staff are thus provided with information on the further design of the individual treatment of each patient and the general optimization of treatment procedures. Feedback from the physicians and nurses working in intensive care medicine will be used to gradually optimize the algorithms used via 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.