Fulda student wins national prize

Anmoldeep Angadi, a Master's student at Fulda University of Applied Sciences, has been honoured with the Student Award for Social Innovation from the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) for his innovative system for resource management in hospitals. The realisation of his pioneering solution is being supported with prize money of 10,000 euros.

Waves of illness, extreme weather conditions or unexpected major events can push the health system to its limits. Hospitals then struggle with staff shortages and intensive care beds become scarce. The consequences: Treatments are delayed and healthcare costs rise. In the worst case scenario, there is a risk of triage. This means that doctors have to decide which patients can still be treated at all.

Real-time data for hospital management
Master's student Anmoldeep Angadi from Fulda has developed a new management system that enables health care providers and authorities to efficiently manage their staff and bed capacities and recognise bottlenecks in good time, even in such tense situations.

In the BMFTR's competition for the Student Prize for Social Innovation, the student secured first place out of a total of 178 applications with his innovation in the field of nursing and health sciences of the future. In addition to the prize money of 10,000 euros, the BMFTR is providing him with coaching resources to further develop his promising approach. The announcement to the award winner states: Their "work impressively demonstrates how social innovation can contribute to tackling the pressing challenges of our time."

Wastewater data and Google searches as indicators
What makes Angadi's solution so innovative is that his interactive dashboard not only visualises the current bed occupancy rates geographically, but also incorporates new indicators such as wastewater data and Google search behaviour. The award winner explains: "By bringing together different real-time data and predictive analyses in a single, intuitive interface, healthcare decision-makers can act efficiently and based on facts, even in crisis situations."

Potential savings in the millions
Professor Dr Jozo Acksteiner describes the advantages as follows: "The solution speeds up the provision of resources and enables more demand-oriented and therefore more effective use of intensive care capacities." The project team estimates annual savings potential in the millions in Hesse alone. "We compared the number of free intensive care beds before and after the introduction of our forecast-based planning: According to this, 45 per cent fewer free intensive care beds had to be kept available after implementing the solution."

It is also expected that the system will help to map the incidence of infection in future pandemics much more efficiently and transparently than broad-based population tests. Hospitals and health authorities have already confirmed the practical relevance and user-friendliness of the solution.

Multidisciplinary solution with Europe-wide potential
The solution is currently particularly effective at regional level, but there are plans for Germany-wide and perhaps even EU-wide application. According to Acksteiner, close, interdisciplinary collaboration with partners from practice and research is crucial for success. "We are working with regional health authorities, associations of statutory health insurance physicians, clinics and research institutions on the further technical development of the dashboard."