IMPULS-NRW – Improved Palliative Care
How can digital technologies improve care for the critically ill? IMPULS-NRW is developing new telemedicine solutions for specialized outpatient palliative care and bringing hospitals, palliative care teams, and technology partners in North Rhine-Westphalia closer together.
IMPULS-NRW: Digital Support for Palliative Care
People with serious illnesses require care that closely integrates medical, nursing, and psychosocial support. Especially in rural areas, such care often involves long travel distances and significant coordination efforts. This is where the ERDF-funded IMPULS-NRW project comes in: It develops digital solutions to improve patient care. The focus is on further developing software that is already used by many specialized outpatient palliative care teams in North Rhine-Westphalia. New features such as telemonitoring and video consultations are designed to enable faster coordination among stakeholders and facilitate professional exchange. The goal is to make information available more efficiently and to better coordinate treatment processes.
More networking, greater care reliability
These digital applications lay the foundation for closer collaboration between outpatient services, hospitals, and other stakeholders in palliative care. This allows for the faster integration of professional expertise, even across greater distances. In rural regions in particular, this helps increase the reliability of care and ensures that existing resources are used in a more targeted manner. At the same time, the project is investigating how digital tools can be integrated into everyday care. The goal is to provide care that is more reliable, more efficient, and better tailored to the needs of those affected.
A Model Region with Far-Reaching Impact
Another key focus is the establishment of two supraregional palliative care centers of excellence in the Münsterland and Ruhr regions. They are intended to serve as specialized points of contact for complex care issues and to make their knowledge accessible digitally. In this way, IMPULS-NRW goes beyond the development of technical solutions: The project is testing new forms of collaboration and creating structures that can also be used in other regions in the long term. In this way, it helps advance digitalization in healthcare and sustainably strengthen palliative care not only in North Rhine-Westphalia.
