[Quality Improvement in Intensive Care Through Telemedicine: the TELnet@NRW Example]

The German health care system faces the great challenge of ensuring high-quality and comprehensive health care in the future as the shortage of physicians continues to grow. Telemedicine-supported healthcare networks, which guarantee access to specialized medical expertise close to the patient's home and tailored to their needs, and thus to high-quality patient-centered treatment, could provide a solution. The TELnet@NRW best-practice project provides a blueprint for expert teleconsultations and put them into practice. TELnet@NRW demonstrated that expert teleconsultations improve interdisciplinary exchange and thus increase quality and efficiency in healthcare. With the widespread telemedical network as a new structure of the healthcare system, TELnet@NRW enabled a more efficient use of existing resources. TELnet@NRW was funded in the first phase of the Innovation Fund. The experts from the two university hospitals in Aachen and Münster provided daily expert teleconsultations to the 17 cooperating hospitals and two physician networks. A 24/7/365 availability was provided, accompanied by training for doctors and nursing staff aimed at improving evidence-based care. Communication took place via an encrypted audio-video conferencing system and the certified data exchange platform FallAkte Plus. The aim of TELnet@NRW was to establish a cross-sectoral telemedical network as a new digital form of care. A total of > 150 000 patients were included. With TELnet@NRW, a major step towards future-proof healthcare was taken, and for us this means providing patients with high-quality care close to patients' homes. This is currently being used as the conceptual basis for the Virtuelles Krankenhaus NRW as a possible solution for the continuation of former project services.