[Digital technologies in nursing-what can they achieve?]

Digital care technologies are becoming increasingly important in long-term care. They encompass all technologies that change processes and products by means of networking and/or sensor technology and include artificial intelligence, that is, processes, methods, and algorithms for learning by means of data and enabling meaningful decisions based on this. Their application ranges from the promotion of professional collaboration, control and management, knowledge acquisition and transfer, interaction and relationships to physical caregiving.Digital care technologies have the potential to simultaneously increase the quality of care and improve working conditions in care. However, there are obstacles to this at various levels: The development of these technologies is often driven by technical possibilities, resulting in products that do not provide any concrete benefits in routine nursing care. During implementation, only the operator is trained; however, there is no organizational development for the systematic integration of these technologies into routine work. In addition, there is a lack of high-quality evaluations showing evidence of the actual benefits to routine work in order to attract potential users to these technologies. Finally, there is no sustainable financing, especially for the maintenance of these technologies.Successful digitization in long-term care therefore requires that technology developers and users, as well as policymakers and scientists, jointly overcome these obstacles. This implies that caregivers are involved in the development process from the outset (co-creation) but also that spaces are created where the effect of digital care technologies can be evaluated in routine caregiving.