Care takes time — AI can give it back

But one remedy has long been available. In some hospitals and inpatient care facilities, AI‑supported applications are already being successfully tested in practice. Voice assistants can record and structure care reports at the bedside, AI can help predict patient numbers to update staff shift plans in real time, while monitoring systems can detect risks like bedsores ahead of time. No, AI cannot solve staff shortages, but it can free up working time. In theory, at least. In practice, meanwhile, the road from innovation to everyday care is not without its bumps. Laura Wiebelitz, Senior Project Manager for Digital Innovation at the Robert Bosch Center for Innovative Health, paints a sobering picture: “Unfortunately, the fact that something is technically possible and available on the market is often no guarantee that it will make it to the hospital ward.” In short, there’s a gap between pilot projects and real-world care, a gap where good ideas can quickly fall into oblivion. “There can be various reasons for this,” explains Laura Wiebelitz. “Often it’s systemic barriers—such as a lack of interoperability, regulatory hurdles, and, above all, data‑protection concerns—that slow down innovation.” Plenty of projects have stood up to funded trials, but there is a lack of clear-cut responsibilities and stable funding channels for long-term rollout. Then there is the fact that any new technology is bound to have teething problems. While it can significantly ease the burden for nurses and other caregivers later down the line in day-to-day operations, getting to grips with a new application is initially time-consuming – especially when everyday life at work is already stressful enough. Some decision-makers aren’t prepared to pile yet more pressure on their already stressed teams, and so the cycle continues. 

This is where ProKIP comes in. The interdisciplinary academic research and support project is based at the University of Bremen and aims to connect stakeholders and share knowledge so that AI offerings can overcome the gap between development and application. ProKIP targets hospitals and research networks, care facilities, and decision-makers who want to develop or introduce AI use in care. The project offers them evidence-based support, evaluation, opportunities to share, and practical guidance. The €25,000 special prize from the Ideas for Impact award, which the Bosch Health Campus awards every two years on behalf of the Robert Bosch Stiftung, recognized the Bremen-based initiative’s approach in this area. The award goes back to the former Otto Mühlschlegel Award, which primarily honored initiatives in elder care as well as projects that viewed aging as an active phase of life and strengthened civic engagement and the social participation of older adults. In its current form, Ideas for Impact honors practice-oriented health innovations that are both effective and scalable, while continuing to focus on projects that benefit older people. This year’s award ceremony will take place on February 26, 2026, in Berlin.

The award is just one of the ways in which the Robert Bosch Stiftung is aiming to enable the transfer of ideas into practice. At the Bosch Health Campus, the Foundation is working beyond the award to support digital innovations and AI applications to actually find their way into hospitals and care facilities. A key player in this is Professor of Medicine Dr. Oliver Opitz, who also heads the Bosch Health Campus’s Bosch Digital Innovation Hub, which supports digital innovations and AI applications from the development stage through to real-world use in healthcare settings. At the Bosch Digital Innovation Hub at the Bosch Health Campus, he is working on that ‘final stretch’ between development and caregiving, namely, how to introduce, trial, and adapt digital applications in real-world conditions. One of its core themes is shaping framework conditions—such as data use—that make the deployment of AI in healthcare possible in the first place. As part of the “AI Health Living Lab,” funded by the state of Baden‑Württemberg, AI solutions are to be developed, tested, and transferred into real‑world application more quickly and with regulatory certainty.The German healthcare system is still very much dominated by paper – at best, PDFs are currently ‘peak’ digitalization,” says Opitz, who goes on to explain that PDFs are however “not analyzable, because they are not structured data.” This generates vast swathes of information every day. “We estimate some 27 pages of documentation per patient case,” he explains. These pages first have to be read and assessed by humans. “This ties up enormous capacities in healthcare professions; this is where AI can help and provide relief,” emphasizes Prof. Dr. Opitz. His team is therefore working on using AI to extract information from PDFs and generate usable datasets and intelligently processed content.This benefits caregivers in two ways: First, AI-based tools can record care processes in real time before converting them into usable data,  and they can also support care planning. For example, staff can document their work using short voice commands. Language barriers will no longer play a role because, in the words of Dr. Opitz, “AI’s biggest strength is translation.” He further explains that systems no longer even need to be ‘fed’ with language at all; instead, care processes can, for example, be recorded and documented using acoustic evaluation or sensors. All of this can—and will—significantly reduce the burden on caregiving staff.

However, if this is to become reality, there remains one factor we cannot overlook: The people who are the very foundation of care – the caregivers themselves. Whether or not AI-supported documentation, sensor technology, or new assistance systems actually make it into everyday practice is not decided solely by research projects or management over at HQ, but also by the places where nurses and other caregivers learn to practice their profession. Joana Ruf is the director of the Irmgard Bosch Learning Center at the Bosch Health Campus. The Center trains future care professionals and addresses the question of how to systematically integrate digital skills and reflective AI use into study. “AI in education is turning everything on its head,” she says. “We are currently facing what may well be the biggest ever upheaval in the history of education.” Knowledge is no longer hard to come by but available 24/7, and this is fundamentally shifting the focus of education. “It’s no longer a case of rote-learning information, but of being able to classify, evaluate, and utilize said information responsibly,” explains Ruf. “We need a complete rethink, and to be honest we are only at the beginning.” A challenge, certainly, but in principle at least, Ruf sees the latest developments as a real opportunity for the caring professions. In fact, she sees potential not just in AI but also in robotics. “We’re not looking at autonomous robots that provide holistic care anytime soon. That’s still the stuff of science fiction,” she says. But she does think assistance systems that relieve physical strain are both realistic and useful, especially when it comes to lifting, repositioning, or transporting patients. And if routine tasks become shorter, if heavy lifting no longer has to be done alone, if physical strain is reduced, then, best case, there will be more time for what care is really all about: closeness, observation, and attention. Technology can provide support, says Ruf, “but care remains a relationship. And not between humans and machines, but between two people.”