Organic Computing for Health Care Systems - Possible Benefits and Challenges

Todays health care institutions will undergo major changes in the next two decades. The reason for this is the change of ageing structure in many industrialized countries. In Germany statistics indicate that the costs for health care systems will at least double per person while the number of contributing, working citizens will significantly lower. At the same time average life expectation will rise above 80 years. To cope with this development, adaptations to organization and process of health care are necessary. Typically tasks in stationary health care can be divided in two groups: tasks which incorporate direct interaction with the patient (care tasks) and tasks which focus on logistics and organization (background tasks). In health care it is not desirable and feasible to reduce efforts in care tasks. So costs and efforts must be reduced within the second