On October 29th 2020, the European Project SHAPES - Smart & Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems hosted its second Dialogue Workshop, organised by Carus Consilium Sachsen, from Germany. In a totally digital format, the Workshop combined recorded presentations and interviews with interactive group work sessions.
Under the theme of Integrated Care Models, the SHAPES Workshop gathered EDGE and the SHAPES partners with representatives of the health and social care sectors that voiced their experience on integrated care for the elderly. The Workshop’s first part was dedicated to a brief introduction to the SHAPES project, its partners and the work carried out for the last year. It was followed by an interesting presentation of the different European governance systems and models for the integrated care of older individuals, complemented with three interviews to specialists from the United Kingdom, Greece and Portugal that allowed the correlation of the meaning of integrated care and their reality in the different European countries. A special attention was then given to the legal aspects of integrated care, under the perspective of the lessons learned in a COVID-19 pandemic context. The morning session was completed with a first approach to the technological elements of the SHAPES Platform and digital solutions, focusing on the interoperability challenges.
In the second part, the SHAPES Integrated Care Models Workshop held four parallel sessions to discuss specific issues: the good practices in integrated care, allowing an open dialogue of learned lessons and future concepts; the users’ perspectives on the delivery of integrated care, namely those of the older individuals and the informal caregivers; the ways to expand the adoption of integrated care models, a goal pursued by the SHAPES project that will be further developed throughout the next two years of work; and the strategy to create, develop and manage the right mindset to embrace integrated care delivery models.
The contributions offered by the several dozens of participants at the SHAPES Workshop will be instrumental to improve and value the technical and non-technical elements that serve as the foundation to the SHAPES Project in their multiples facets. Associated to a highly targeted awareness campaign, the second SHAPES Dialogue Workshop proved itself as a catalyst for the development of collective actions towards the edification of the SHAPES ecosystem and its long-term sustainability.