As of May 1, 2022, exactly 22 innovation fund projects in the area of new forms of care have been completed. In some cases—such as IGiB-StimMT, RESIST, and TRANSLATE-NAMSE—the Innovation Committee recommends the positively evaluated findings of these projects to the associations of health and long-term care insurance funds at the federal level, as well as to the German Hospital Federation, the Association of University Hospitals, and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. For others—such as PETRA and PIKKO—no recommendation is issued. However, still others—such as TELnet@NRW—receive a recommendation for integration into standard care, addressed to the state health ministries. It is important to note that all these decisions are primarily political in nature. They are also based on the highly diverse evaluation and outcome reports, which can range from a few dozen to several hundred pages in length, are all structured differently, and are only available in PDF format. An overview of all innovation fund projects, let alone all detailed results, cannot be presented in this format. It is therefore to be feared that the true treasure of all these projects financed by health insurance funds (or rather, by those with statutory health insurance through them) may not be realized, or only partially realized.
This is precisely where the concept of the "knowledge landscape for healthcare research" comes in, which "Monitor Versorgungsforschung" developed pro bono on the topic of innovation funds together with German technology partners – Metaphacts in Walldorf and Martin Klein in Berlin. This demonstrated the added value that can be generated through a new type of knowledge management. Incidentally, this type of knowledge management is already well-established in the international pharmaceutical industry and is based on the innovative data technologies of a modern graph database.
The next step, to transform the initiators' purely "academic exercise" into a model that makes knowledge from the innovation fund, but also from as many other funding sources as possible, transparently accessible to all players, requires funding and, above all, strong partners who want to further develop this idea.
To be quite frank: The solution we have proposed is welcomed and supported by many prominent and relevant parties, but so far we have not found a "major market participant" who wants to promote genuine transparency, not only for the sake of transparency per se, but above all for the sake of the quality of care and the patients.
Whoever chooses to lead the consortium in the "Knowledge Landscape Health Services Research" initiative with the launch of the "Innovation Fund" would not only propel health services research forward, but would also unlock the strategic advantages of a systemic knowledge edge for themselves and their stakeholders, and position themselves as a leading innovator in the field of networked, AI-supported knowledge management in healthcare. Learn more, invest, and get involved.