Palliative care as a digital working world: Perspectives and design options for the digital transformation of communication and collaboration processes in multi-professional care in the last phase of life (PALLADiUM)

Project description

The bidt research project PALLADiUM investigated the digital working environment of palliative care, aiming to strengthen multi-professional collaboration and develop innovative tools, approaches, and knowledge for the healthcare and nursing work environments.

The primary goal of the project was to make the existing expertise, diverse experiential knowledge, and case-specific knowledge of members of multi-professional teams in palliative care wards collectively accessible and usable through digitalization (process optimization). This was intended to improve the quality of collaboration and, ultimately, patient care (outcome optimization).

The secondary goal was to contribute fundamentally to understanding the success-critical design factors of digital application systems in a multi-professional context, thereby generating generalizable knowledge for the human- and process-centered digitalization of work systems in healthcare and nursing which follow similar logic and face similar challenges, such as person-centeredness, multi-professional collaboration, and heterogeneous levels of information, knowledge, and competence. The project employed an interdisciplinary consortium approach that integrated perspectives from palliative care, sociology, and information systems. This interplay enabled a comprehensive understanding of complex workflows and led to practical solutions.

The central results reflected the three main solution areas of the project:

• the design of a digital work system,
• the application of AI-based approaches,
• and the development of training concepts.

The core focus was on creating a digitally supported work system specifically tailored to the needs of palliative care. At the heart of this system was a mobile app designed to optimize information flows, close knowledge gaps, and make profession-specific (experiential) knowledge accessible. Based on extensive ethnographic field studies conducted at the University Hospital Erlangen, the challenges of multi-professional collaboration and the shortcomings of the existing hospital information system were analyzed and addressed. The mobile app structured both formal and informal information, integrating it into the workflows of palliative care teams in a situation-specific manner. Through a co-creative development process and evaluation using case vignettes, the system was refined. Results showed that the work system enhanced communication and exchange within teams and served as a model for other medical contexts.

Building on the gathered experiences, PALLADiUM also explored the use of generative artificial intelligence. Using large language models, a symptom matrix was developed to identify knowledge gaps and serve as a shared basis for multi-professional discussions on the hospital ward.

In addition to socio-technical development, the project emphasized knowledge transfer. Training materials, such as YouTube videos, practical recommendations, and several domain-specific papers, were created to raise awareness among professionals and researchers and to ensure sustainable accessibility of the project outcomes.

PALLADiUM demonstrated that successful digitalization relies on a close integration of detailed understanding of social processes, technical innovation, domain-specific expertise, and interdisciplinary collaboration. This approach resulted in transferable solutions for other areas of healthcare. The project made a significant contribution to the successful digital transformation of a particularly sensitive, dynamic, and complex working environment.

Project team

Alumni

Publications

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