Patient Monitoring Roundtable No. 3 | 2026: Hospital@Home – An Opportunity for Improved Care?
Save the Date: The fourth roundtable of the year will take place on May 21 at BALTIC at Charité, focusing on “Robotics in Healthcare”. Interested? Then book your ticket here to attend in person or online!
“Hospital@Home: Wearables as the Foundation for Safe Out-of-Hospital Care” – under this guiding theme, we gathered on April 20, 2026, at the Berlin Simulation and Training Center (BeST) for the third Patient Monitoring Roundtable (PMRT) of the year. At the heart of the discussion was a key question for modern healthcare: How can Hospital@Home concepts improve healthcare delivery?
Prof. Dr. Somasundaram, Medical Director of the Emergency Department at Charité Benjamin Franklin, opened his keynote with an overview of current emergency care. He particularly highlighted the growing challenges posed by multimorbid geriatric patients as a result of demographic change.
In 2023, there were around 5.7 million people in need of care in Germany, approximately 86% of whom were cared for in outpatient settings. In addition, about 1.8 million people were living with dementia. Several key implications arise from this:
- Increasing demand for care services alongside a shrinking workforce
- Use of emergency services and hospitals as an additional stressor for elderly, care-dependent individuals—potentially leading to adverse events such as delirium, nosocomial infections, or falls
- Partially avoidable use of emergency care structures
At this point, Prof. Dr. Somasundaram highlighted the potential of prevention, particularly tertiary prevention, as well as home-based care. The focus is on concepts such as Hospital@Home (shifting inpatient services into the home environment) and Stay@Home–Treat@Home (acute and emergency care in a familiar setting).
According to Somasundaram, a central issue is the lack of a uniform definition of what constitutes an emergency: “Those seeking help define the emergency; the system defines the response.”
Especially in older and care-dependent individuals, even seemingly minor acute events can have serious consequences. Against the backdrop of workforce shortages, it is becoming increasingly important to create synergies between outpatient and inpatient structures—this is precisely where the Stay@Home–Treat@Home concept comes in. The goal is to detect deteriorations early through tertiary prevention and treat them in the home environment, thereby reducing unplanned hospital admissions and healthcare costs.
Stay@Home–Treat@Home is based on a telemedically networked system involving multiple stakeholders: patients, general practitioners, the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KV), aid organizations, and telemedical consultation and monitoring provided by the central emergency department at Charité’s Benjamin Franklin Campus. This is complemented by a digital, interactive patient diary (DiG).
Lessons learned from the project:
- Recruitment via general practitioners largely failed
- Organizational and coordination efforts are high
- The digital patient diary must be significantly simplified and seamlessly integrated into existing and future IT infrastructures (e.g., the electronic patient record, ePA)
Dr. med. Anne Sophie Platzbecker, researcher at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam and Head of Medical Innovation & Transformation at the Brandenburg Medical School, provided an insightful international comparison in her keynote: While the USA and Israel have already integrated Hospital@Home into standard care, Germany remains in a pilot phase without a standardized reimbursement model.
Three approaches are distinguished: Admission Avoidance, Early Supported Discharge, and Virtual Wards—all based on telemonitoring, teleconsultations, and interoperable IT systems.
Evidence:
- Clinical & Safety: Complications and mortality are generally comparable or lower; rehospitalizations are often reduced
- Economics: Lower overall costs, especially due to savings in post-acute services, infrastructure, and overhead
- Patient Experience: Higher satisfaction, improved quality of life, sleep, and mobility; better delirium prevention; caregiver burden varies
Success factors: Clear patient selection, 24/7 escalation structures, digital integration, as well as standardized KPIs and financing models are crucial.
Outlook – New concepts at the Brandenburg Medical School:
- Oncology: Data spaces, telemedical pathways, and AI-supported decision-making
- Geriatrics: Interoperable data, sensor technology, and predictive risk models
- Surgery: Digital perioperative processes, telemonitoring, and follow-up care
These are complemented by hospital-equivalent “Hospital-at-Home” approaches and regional “health cubes” in rural areas.
Conclusion
Hospital@Home has the potential to make healthcare more efficient and patient-centered—provided that financing, structure, and digitalization are effectively aligned.
Workshops: Workshops: Dementia, Patient Journey, and Out-of-Hospital Ventilation
The keynotes were followed by three workshops that explored the topic of Hospital@Home from different perspectives and with various focal points.
In the first workshop, Prof. Somasundaram expanded on his keynote with insights into the current state of dementia care. With rising care demands and increasingly limited personnel resources, family members are taking on more caregiving responsibilities, while costs continue to rise under strained financial conditions.
As a solution approach, he introduced the “MTO” concept (Human–Technology–Organization), which describes the interaction between human requirements, deployed technology, and organizational processes—a key factor for any innovation. This was illustrated by the development of a specialized bed for dementia patients prone to wandering, designed to have a calming effect through sensory reduction.
In the second workshop, led by Dominic Hillerkuss from Hospital at Home Deutschland e.V., an ideal patient journey for Hospital@Home was developed. It should be integrated, indication-based, and supported by remote patient monitoring.
In the outer setting, social organizations and service providers were identified as important stakeholders. Success factors include home visits, social integration (e.g., neighbors), balanced collaboration among all participants, and the use of AI.
In the inner setting, advantages such as higher cost efficiency, improved treatment options, reduced transportation effort, and new role profiles for clinical staff were highlighted.
In the third workshop, Sarah Berger and Jasper Wagnitz provided insights into the G-BA project T-CABS (Telemedical Center for Out-of-Hospital Ventilation and Oxygen Therapy). The focus is on the telemedical care of patients requiring out-of-hospital ventilation.
It became clear that while telemonitoring enables greater safety and more proactive care, it also introduces new requirements for communication, responsibilities, and integration into existing structures. Key challenges include data standardization, technical processes, and the training and engagement of patients.
Conclusion
The Patient Monitoring Roundtable has shown that Hospital@Home is a promising approach for addressing the growing demand for care, particularly among older and multimorbid patients, in a patient-centered, efficient, and potentially cost-effective manner. International examples demonstrate its effectiveness, while in Germany, structural hurdles such as a lack of reimbursement models, high organizational complexity, and insufficiently integrated digital infrastructures are still hindering widespread implementation.
At the same time, it became clear that success depends largely on the interplay of people, technology, and organization. Interoperable systems, clear processes, appropriate patient selection, and the involvement of all stakeholders, including family members, are crucial to realizing the potential of Hospital@Home in a sustainable manner and integrating it into standard care.
Next PMRT on May 21 at BALTIC
We look forward to welcoming you on May 21 to the fourth Patient Monitoring Roundtable of the year at BALTIC, Charité. The focus topic will be robotics in nursing care.
Don’t miss it!
The Patient Monitoring Roundtable is organized by INCH Health in partnership with the Institute for Medical Informatics at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Special thanks go to our sponsors Masimo, Dräger, and Philips, whose support makes the Patient Monitoring Roundtable possible.
We also thank Prof. Dr. Rajan Somasundaram and Dr. Anne Sophie Platzbecker for their inspiring keynotes and excellent workshops, as well as all participants for their dedicated collaboration in developing future scenarios for intelligent, safe, and patient-centered care.
