Innovative Healthcare / Digital Health

Calling health care and social services separate worlds is not simply pulled out of thin air. With their own systems and rules, both belong to one of the most complex, but also most conservative entities in our society. Digitalization is still in its infancy in both worlds.

However, the diversity of ideas and visions shows that the majority of players - be they doctors, educators, nurses or social workers - want to use digitalization to bring about change and lighten the load. The first steps in the right direction have already been and are being taken. But in order to make meaningful use of the opportunities offered by digitization and new technologies, e.g., to support clients, relieve the burden on staff, optimize processes and improve the quality of work in the healthcare and social services sectors, it is not enough to cooperate and network with those involved in the respective sectors.

What is needed is solidarity with engineers from the technology sector and IT specialists. This is precisely where two worlds meet that - at least so far - hardly understand each other. So far, they have not yet succeeded in closing ranks. Only by networking these professions can the expertise of each and every one of these players be bundled far beyond their core field of activity and used to develop sustainable and practicable digital and technical solutions.

This is precisely where we come in with the "Innovative Healthcare" degree program. We bring together all professions and actors and contribute to the efficient dissemination of new approaches and technologies. We support the implementation of established technologies and at the same time work on the development of new approaches.

" Shape and not manage" is our thinking maxim. The steamship "traditional healthcare" has had its day, the future belongs to the spaceship "innovative healthcare"!

Within the framework of the Innovative Healthcare program, we want to...

... build bridges

In the study program "Innovative Health Care" we build bridges between the fields of health care, social services, engineering, informatics and management.  Our graduates are well versed in the structures and terminology of healthcare and social services as well as the workflows of the individual professions, are familiar with the needs of users and at the same time have a sound knowledge of the technical principles and functionalities of individual technologies as well as digital applications and their benefits.

… connect

You form the link between the disciplines, strengthen their collaboration, bundle existing and viable technologies and break down communication barriers. Together with all stakeholders, you also find sustainable solutions that meet the needs of each individual.

... show diversity

At the same time, you know the variety of applications and measures as well as their possible uses and limitations.

... put people at the center

In doing so, we put people at the center of our efforts. The goal of the "Innovative Healthcare" degree program is to relieve employees in the healthcare and social services sectors by simplifying or even eliminating processes with the help of new technologies and digital applications. Reliable duty schedules through the use of artificial intelligence or physical relief through robotics should no longer be topics of the future, but should already be able to be used in a timely manner, taking into account user-friendliness and user experience.

... generate added value for all

Together with our students, we innovate on the basis of actual needs, develop, test and evaluate. In this way, we generate added value for everyone.

Our mission is...

...to train innovative people whose strength lies in seeing opportunities in change and questioningstructures - in short, who bring a Growth Mindset with them.

Our students will make the difference in the future. Through their diversity of ideas and openness, existing systems can be rethought and adapted.

Together with our cooperation partners, we provide you with a framework of personal know-how and practical experience. In our interdisciplinary laboratories, we remove the rigid boundaries between individual disciplines and offer plenty of space for technologies from the engineering field to grow together with medical and nursing systems.

A place to develop, an opportunity to build networks and a free space where creativity and questioning the status quo is encouraged and backed up with constructive approaches to solutions - we offer even more. We want to be the helping hand that implements ideas with our students, recognizing and developing their individual strengths. We want to awaken in our students the courage to try things out, because later we seldom regret what we have done, but what we did not dare to do. We want to give them the opportunity - as students and partners - to work together on something bigger. Because we don't just see what's right in front of our noses, we also dare to look beyond.

"With more than 1,200 volunteers and 520 full-time employees, the BRK district association of Kronach is one of the leading service providers in the social economy around Kronach.

We offer a seamless assistance, care and supply network and thus "quality of life for generations".

This is an ideal platform for the "innovative health care" course of study at Hof University of Applied Sciences with BRK Kronach as part of the Lucas Cranach Campus.

This cooperation offers enormous development potential for both the companies and the entire region, but especially for the students.

"Quality of life management" will be the challenge but also the opportunity of the future."

The Caritas Association for the District of Kronach e.V., stands, as the name CARITAS already says, for charity. With this basic attitude towards people, our welfare association, with a total of 480 employees and 300 volunteers, operates a wide variety of welfare facilities. The developments in the health and care industry have prompted us years ago to focus on new ways and innovation. For about 6 years, our department "Digitization and Development" has therefore been working together with a wide variety of players from research, teaching and development.

The cooperation with Hof University of Applied Sciences, the Lucas-Cranach-Campus and the research lab pulsnetz.de is great and an enrichment for all sides. We are very happy to provide students with both our nursing expertise and our competence in development and research. We are constantly working on merging digitization, AI and our core competence of human care. Doing one and not letting go of the other is what the social economy needs professionals looking to the future. We are proud to be able to support this path with our resources in the "Innovative Healthcare" degree program.

Digitization and the use of new technologies in healthcare, nursing, and social institutions are the means of choice to secure the care of people for the next decades. Things will be different, but not worse! This requires "mediators between the worlds" with bite, foresight, enthusiasm for new things, the will for interdisciplinary cooperation and an eye for the "needs of the people.

Digitization and mechanization in all their facets are not ends in themselves, just as ethics, nursing and medical care are not! The top priority is always the well-being of the human being.

This requires the necessary competencies and courage for change in all disciplines!

Helios is Europe's leading private hospital operator with around 20 million patients per year. The Helios Frankenwaldklinik Kronach is a versatile hospital for basic and standard care that provides patients from the district of Kronach and surrounding regions with medicine at the highest level. We offer state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures, for example, we operate our own biplane cardiac catheterization laboratory with electrophysiology measuring station and a 40-line CT.

This makes us an ideal cooperation partner for the "innovative healthcare" degree program at Hof University of Applied Sciences. Digitalization and the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare offer enormous potential for prevention, diagnosis and treatment. We are constantly working on leveraging the strengths of digitalization for personal healthcare. We are happy to provide students with our personnel expertise as well as our technologies in order to jointly develop solutions to further increase the quality of care for patients.

pulsnetz.de - Mensch und Technik im Gemeinwesen (pulsnetz MuTiG) is the outpatient and virtual future centre for health and social care in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. The aim is to advance digitalisation, especially in outpatient and inpatient geriatric care facilities. 

The "Trucks of Digitisation" (TruDis) allow employees and managers to experience digital technologies on site in their own facility, to understand their opportunities and risks and to develop their own, well-founded attitude towards them. At the same time, fears of contact are reduced and initial experiences in dealing with digital technologies are made possible. 

In individual consultations, institutions are accompanied and enabled to design, launch and implement their own initial digitisation projects. Due to the diverse composition of the consortium, the project staff can provide support with technical, organisational, business management and professional issues.

At the same time, managers and employees in the health and social care sector are taught key skills in dealing with digital technologies within the framework of innovative qualification concepts. Among other things, an internet platform is used for this purpose, which is being expanded into a central contact point for information, exchange and learning.

This work is flanked by scientifically based market studies on central technologies, such as virtual reality or voice control.

Get to know and try out new technologies - free of charge

The TruDi Roadshow offers the opportunity to get to know and try out modern technologies for everyday work - practically and concretely, in the facilities on site. The offer is aimed at employees in the social economy in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia.

TruDi is the digitalization truck of the pulsnetz KI project. Sophia Giegold and Désirée Neeb, the consultants for Bavaria and research assistants at iisys, will try out the technologies together with care workers, educators and social counselors and help develop ideas for a healthier everyday working life.

If you work in geriatric care, childcare or social counseling, connect with us!