University of Twente will lead the four-year Interreg project CARE-FLOW to improve the cross-border collaboration between the Netherlands and Germany through intelligent decision-support in capacity planning and patient flow optimisation. In both countries, the healthcare systems are under growing pressure due to rising costs, increasing demand and staff shortages. The consortium of software companies, universities and healthcare organisations will use regional data, prognosis and planning algorithms to utilise available resources more efficiently for better health outcomes.
Healthcare spending is at a record high in both Germany and the Netherlands. Rising costs and an ageing population put increasing pressure on hospitals, emergency services, and care facilities. At the same time, a worsening shortage of healthcare professionals limits available treatment capacity. In border regions, this strain is amplified by a lack of coordination between countries, leading to inefficiencies such as duplicate resources, uneven workloads, and delays in care. Cross-border collaboration is already performed by healthcare organisations in the region today and was especially highly effective in past crises, like the transfer of Dutch patients to German hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these efforts are still largely manual and fragmented.
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