PREPCA.I.RE stands for "PREparing Primary Care planning to be AI Ready" and is a project in which Arteveldehogeschool and Ghent University are joining forces with the support of 18 partners from the field, including nine healthcare organizations, six IT companies and three network partners.

The overall goal of the PREPCA.I.RE project is to strengthen Flemish home care organizations and ICT companies in order to optimize the development, use and customized implementation of intelligent planning tools in primary care. Thus, we want to support healthcare organizations and companies to optimize planning for home nursing and family care.

The PREPCA.I.RE project resulted in a comprehensive study regarding the needs and possible solutions based on AI in healthcare. The technical elaboration included the design and development of a scheduling algorithm for home care organizations. Two specific proof-of-concepts were developed: one for home nursing and one for family care, given that both have specific needs and associated different data fields. The results showed significant improvements in efficiency in terms of staffing costs, distance traveled, and fulfilling user needs.