CARE-Wise Project – AI-Based Assistance for Everyday Nursing Care
The CARE-Wise project is developing an AI-based assistance system designed to support nursing professionals in situations requiring action during their daily work and to provide them with fast, needs-based access to relevant information. The aim is to use generative AI to make existing professional and institutional knowledge readily accessible to nursing staff directly within their workflows.
The assistance system is designed to integrate different sources of information and knowledge. These include, for example, medication plans that can be digitally captured and processed. By connecting to external knowledge sources, the system can provide information on dosages and potential drug interactions. At the same time, CARE-Wise is intended to answer questions relating to institution-specific quality management procedures and operational guidelines. In addition, the project is investigating methods for the automatic generation of instructional pictograms to communicate complex information visually and in an easily understandable way.
A key research focus of DFKI is the development and evaluation of suitable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) methods. Different approaches to integrating and retrieving domain-specific knowledge are being investigated and compared. In addition to a conventional RAG approach, a metadata-based approach is being developed that takes into account additional relationships and structures within the information sources. Further areas of focus include the integration of clinical knowledge, the multimodal processing of different types of data, and suitable strategies for preparing and utilizing metadata. Based on defined evaluation criteria, both retrieval performance and the quality of the generated responses are systematically assessed.
The system is being developed in close collaboration with the project partners and is closely aligned with the requirements of real-world nursing practice. As the project's technical partner, Splitbot contributes an existing general-purpose chat assistant, which is being further developed to meet the requirements of the nursing care scenario and extended with the components developed within the project. D&S contributes expertise from nursing practice, supports the definition of requirements and relevant information resources, and conducts practical tests of the developed system. DFKI is primarily responsible for the research-driven development, investigation, and evaluation of the AI and RAG components.
CARE-Wise is a project of the Granni Community and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) as part of the DATIpilot funding initiative and managed by Project Management Jülich (PtJ). The project has a duration of 18 months.
Partners
Splitbot GmbH D&S Unsere Pflege GmbH Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz
