Scale-IT-Up Workshop: Scaling Up Care for Older Adults, 20 & 21 Feb Porto 2025

Please join us at the Scale-IT-Up Workshop 2025 – Scaling Up Care for Older Adults in Porto, Portugal, 20 & 21 February. This workshop is in conjunction with the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies – BIOSTEC 2025.

SCOPE

Key Question: How to Scale Up Care for Older Adults Successfully?

As the global population ages, so does the demand for effective, scalable, and sustainable care solutions for older adults, creating critical challenges in healthcare and societal support systems. The “Scale-IT-up 2025” workshop aims to explore and expand the role of digital health technologies in addressing these challenges, specifically focusing on the shortage and burden of caregivers. We also encourage discussing digitally enabled care concepts such as at-home hospitalization or virtual wards, which innovate traditional care concepts. This workshop will serve as a platform for researchers, technologists, and practitioners to share insights, innovations, and strategies for integrating digital health solutions into care for older adults.

We invite submissions that address the following themes:

  • Development and implementation of digital health technologies (or other innovative technological solutions) tailored towards care for older adults (e.g., psychosocial support for caregivers, alleviating caregiver burden, supporting older adults, etc.).
  • Digital health interventions facilitating health behavior change and habit formation.
  • Digital health solutions for mitigating the demographic impact on the healthcare system.
  • Scaling and Diffusion of Digital Health Solutions, including both the scaling of business models and regional diffusion.
  • Design considerations of technology for older adults (e.g., value-sensitive design, ethics by design, etc.).
  • Case studies on the effectiveness of digital interventions in care settings.
  • Market analysis and industry engagement identify leading and emerging technology sector players in care for older adults.
  • Transformative solutions moving traditional care into digitally enabled integrated care (e.g., at-home hospitalization).

The workshop aims to contribute to developing scalable, effective, and human-centered care solutions that can be integrated into existing health systems. Participants will understand how digital health technologies can transform care for older adults and provide support for caregivers. This workshop will also facilitate multidisciplinary dialogue to…

  • explore well-established market leaders and top-funded early-stage companies shaping the future of care services for older adults.
  • engage with findings from interviews and assessments of these companies, providing a comprehensive view of current innovations and trends in the market.
  • highlight and disseminate cutting-edge research and practical solutions in digital health for older adults.
  • identify and discuss innovation patterns and lessons learned from successful digital health implementations.
  • foster collaborations between academia, industry, and healthcare providers to accelerate the adoption of new technologies.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Topics and research questions of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • How to make prevention successful?
  • How to make healthy longevity successful?
  • How to make healthy aging successful?
  • How to make care for older adults successful?
  • How to cope with the economic burden of non-communicable diseases?
  • Which emerging business models in digital health are promising?
  • What needs to change in terms of regulations to make digital health successful?
  • What is the future role of a health insurance company?
  • Which digital health technologies (DHTs) are already used and reimbursed? In which fields? What are those offerings? How are these paid for? (self-paid, basic insurance, additional insurance, etc.)
  • Are you offering DHTs? Did you develop these DHTs yourself or are you partnering with startups or other companies?
  • Do you offer DHTs rather in the prevention or in the management of diseases?
  • For which diseases do you think we need DHTs most? Why? Where do you think DHTs will work best? (what kind of disease and persona)
  • What is your main goal of offering these DHTs? (new revenue streams, cost-efficiency, customer loyalty)
  • What is the importance of business ecosystems for these DHTs?
  • What kind of learnings did you generate so far? Are there DHTs that worked better than others? Why?
  • Could you already assess the effectiveness and/or efficiency of DHTs?
  • What kind of DHTs failed? What were the reasons?
  • How would you improve DHTs you are offering?

IMPORTANT DATES

  • Paper Submission: December 18, 2024
  • Authors Notification: January 14, 2025
  • Camera Ready and Registration: January 22, 2025
  • Workshop: 21 (afternoon) and 22 (morning) February, 2025

Please find here more information on the submission and publication process.

WORKSHOP CHAIRS

  1. Kai Gand, Digital Health at the Faculty of Economics, TU Dresden, Germany
  2. Hannes Schlieter, Research Group Digital Health at the Faculty of Economics, TU Dresden, Germany
  3. Rasita Vinay, Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine (IBME), University of Zurich & School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
  4. Tobias Kowatsch, Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, University of Zurich & School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen, and Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

WORKSHOP COMMITTEE

  1. Thure Weimann, Digital Health at the Faculty of Economics, TU Dresden, Germany
  2. Izolda Sabanovic, Mavie Next GmbH, Vienna, Austria
  3. PD Dr. med. Mathias Schlögl, MPH, EMBA HSG, Barmelweid, Switzerland
  4. Dr. Esther Brill, University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Bern, Switzerland (t.b.c.)
  5. Prof. Dr. med. Stefan Klöppel, University Hospital of Old Age Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Bern, Switzerland
  6. Dr. Andrea Horn, URPP Dynamics of Healthy Aging, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  7. Panita Huynh, School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
  8. Wasu Mekniran, Institute of Technology Management, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
  9. Estelle Pfitzer, School of Medicine, University of St.Gallen & MTIP Basel, Switzerland

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