Danish-German collaboration,  focused on Intelligent Logistics, Digitalisation and Automated Workflows for the Homecare and Nursing homes sector.

ILDA-care (Intelligent Logistics, Digitalisation and Automated Workflows for the Homecare and Nursing homes sector) was a Danish-German collaboration between Welfare Tech and the German cluster BioRegio STERN from Baden-Württemberg.

The new generation of elderly have high expectations to the quality of care they are entitled to receive. Due to the demographic changes, the resources for delivering care to the rapidly growing group of elderlies, are not likely to increase accordingly. More efficiency in the care sector is necessary to maintain the current high quality of care.

The scarce human resources (warm hands) available in the care sector should be applied on personal care of elderly people not logistics or other time-consuming workflows, which are reducing the available care time of the nursing staff for elderly people. Hence, by contributing to a social sustainability in an elderly care sector affected by the demographic change, a huge opportunity emerges for developing a new value-chain. This include automation, digitalisation and intelligent logistics for nursing homes and homecare and thereby tapping into vast global markets.

We understood "ILDA-care" as an excellent opportunity for establishing a good working relations between the Welfare Tech Cluster in Denmark and the Bioregion STERN Cluster in Germany. "Smart care technology" is an emerging market, and most commonly developed by highly innovative SMEs born with an international vision.

The gains of linking Danish and German SME's in ILDA-care were amongst others to give German SMEs access to knowhow and "in-vivo" Danish testbeds, and through the partnership develop a product in the more mature Danish elderly care market, while the German care sector is undergoing the necessary reforms. The Danish SMEs gained knowledge of the German market, business culture, and deep technological competences.

Cluster participants from Welfare Tech have specifically asked to pursue opportunities in the German healthcare market. The acute lack of care professionals in Germany opens a market for delivery of quality care by introducing technology in new labour extensive workflows. An emerging market that Danish health innovation has been targeting for the last ten years.

In Germany Digitalisation 4.0 and Industry 4.0 are main focuses, and the competences that has been achieved in these fields could be transferred with a good insight to the elderly care sector.

The collaboration led to initiation of:

• New cross-sectorial product/service developments in the areas of homecare and nursing homes
• New partnerships within the field of automation, digitalisation and intelligent logistics
• Development of Danish-German partnerships
• Increased innovation collaboration
• Joint ideas to solution within the value chains of automation, digitalisation and intelligent logistics for the homecare and nursing home markets