Tech4P

 

Strategies for the Integration of Technology in the Provision of Personal Services

 

Challenges

Personal services represent an important area in terms of technology development and adaptation as well as for processes and product innovation. Their importance is based on the fact that they are the foundation and prerequisite for ever larger parts of social, economic and private life. The goal of the Tech4P project is to ensure that high-quality services will continue to be available to broad sections of the population at reasonable cost. This demands top performance in the area of personal services, especially in development and implementation. New ways of designing and delivering services have to be developed and tested in order to efficiently meet the future needs of our society for these services. One promising way forward is integrating technical support systems into personal services. The aim here is to harmonize innovation goals, productivity goals and social goals. This joint project investigates how service processes and technology can be combined in a profitable and beneficial way. The thesis is that future developments in personal services can only be achieved by intensifying the integration of technology while at the same time optimizing the functioning of the overall system.

Goals

The Tech4P project examines three complex questions: Complexity of the value chains, affinity with technology and mechanization. On the basis of analyses made from a technological, an organizational and a human perspective, success factors and obstacles for innovations with respect to the integration of technical support systems in personal services will be determined. Three different cases will be comprehensively analyzed from the respective perspectives of the project partners with their special expertise, so that a catalogue of hypotheses can be developed for a Delphi study. The Delphi study will be conducted with experts from the services sector, the health sector and technology development. The subsequent explorative development of future scenarios derived from the three different perspectives will result in a comprehensive outlook for technology-assisted person-related services in the health care environment. A roadmap will give a clear presentation of needs and areas that require future research.

Funding

BMBF – Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) – in the priority measures “Personenbezogene Dienstleistungen am Beispiel seltener Krankheiten” (Personal services using the example of rare diseases) (funding code: 01FG10003).

Project Management Agency

DLR-PT – Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Projektträger (on behalf of the BMBF)

Project Partners

Forschungsinstitut für Rationalisierung (FIR) e.V. an der RWTH Aachen

Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung (IPA)