Good practice:

Baden Württemberg State Competence Center for Care & Digitization / PflegeDigital@BW

Care connects people. Technology can and should serve this connection. In order to ensure that technical progress can also lead to social progress, however, we need to qualify and educate people that are involved in care. PflegeDigital@BW works on this need.
Initiated and funded by the Baden Württemberg Ministry of Social Affairs, the center develops, analyzes and communicates care-friendly digital solutions together with partners from science and society, business and practice. PflegeDigital@BW is linked to the LebensPhasenHaus in Tübingen and is run by the the the Steinbeis Transfer Center for Social and Technological Innovation.
As a central point of contact for consulting, training, and education services, PflegeDigital@BW also acts as a networking node beyond the state of Baden Württemberg. In this way, interested parties and relatives of people with care needs, as well as professional caregivers, are to be given the opportunity to test various applications in real life and gain an impression of them. In this way, all those involved will learn from each other so that digitally supported services are useful and manageable for people with care needs and caregivers alike. In addition to that, innovations are developed in a co-creative and participatory way.
Informal and formal care givers, patients and citizens, (Longterm) Care Organisations, Social Entrepreneurs and SMEs, academia, administration and policy makers, craftsmen and healthcare insurers.

The BW Ministry of Social Affairs provided a budget of 2 full-time staff in 2020/2021 and in the future 5-6 staff members. PflegeDigital@BW is planning to build special training and workshop facilities next to the LebensPhasenHaus and invest in technical equipment and a transfer mobile.

Since its start in fall 2020 more than 600 professional care givers, policy makers, developers, innovation intermediaries and craftsmen have been in contact with PflegeDigital@BW.
This shows not only that a diversity of stakeholders are interested in exchange, but that there is a great need for orchestration and innovation management at a regional level.

The multi-stakeholder dialogue can be quite challenging, since has a different perspective and different interests. However, engaging with quadruple-helix stakeholders in a collaborative way is a necessary innovation capacity and needs to be practiced regularly.

Care affects us all. That is why PflegeDigital@BW supports knowledge transfer and competence building throughout the state via a special “Transfermobil” (a vehicle with all kind of equipment for mobile training and workshops), as well as in special training rooms and workshop facilities in Tübingen, where additional new premises (“Campus PflegeDigital”) will be built in 2022/23.
It is important to mention that PflegeDigital@BW builds upon existing structures (like LebensPhasenHaus, Pflegeberatung, Pflegekonferenzen etc.) and is strengthening them by connecting them to each other and through various support measures (like Transfermobil, Campus PflegeDigital, Online-Platform etc.)