A new practical toolkit developed by EHTEL and the Politechnic University of Madrid in the EU-funded Laurel Project is helping care organisations across Europe understand how ready they are to embrace digital technology — and what it will take them to get there.
The Challenge: Great Ideas, but Are Organisations Ready?
Picture a hospital that wants to offer home care to elderly patients after their discharge — not just in-person visits, but a hybrid model combining video consultations, remote health monitoring, fall detection, and medication reminders. It is a compelling vision. But before investing in technology, a critical question must be answered: is the organisation genuinely ready to make it work? This is precisely the challenge the Laurel Digital Maturity Assessment Tool (DMAT) has been designed to address.
What Is Digital Maturity — and Why Does It Matter?
Digital maturity is a measure of how well-prepared an organisation is to adopt and benefit from digital technology. Preparedness goes far beyond having the right software. Actual digital maturity encompasses leadership commitment, infrastructure, staff capabilities, cybersecurity resilience, and the ability of different services to work together seamlessly in a digital environment.
Digital tools have the potential to transform care — making care more joined-up, person-centred, and responsive. But that potential can only be achieved when care organisations are really ready to use those tools well.
The Laurel Project and the DMAT
The Laurel Project is an EU-funded research initiative focused on improving integrated long-term care (I-LTC) across Europe — connecting health, social care, and other services around the needs of individuals, rather than each service remaining in its own silo.
As part of this work, EHTEL has developed the DMAT: a structured, practical toolkit that enables care organisations to assess their digital readiness across four distinct levels:
- The organisation as a whole — governance, infrastructure, and cybersecurity
- The specific care programme or initiative under assessment
- The individual services being delivered within that programme
- The digital equipment and technologies in use
How DMAT Works in Practice
To illustrate the DMAT in action, consider a fictional but realistic scenario. Rona has been hired by a general hospital to set up a new home care service for elderly patients due to be discharged. The planned service will combine in-person visits with remote digital support — including video consultations, vital signs monitoring, fall detectors, and SOS alarms.
Before selecting a digital solution, Rona needs to know what the hospital is capable of delivering. That is where DMAT comes in.
Tool 1 gives Rona a comprehensive view of the hospital's overall digital maturity — covering everything from cybersecurity to digital leadership.
Tool 2 goes deeper, assessing readiness for each individual service and technology across four dimensions: system, service, technology, and business.
Together, these two tools produce a clear picture of the status of the organisation — and all the elements that need to be in place before digital technologies can improve the quality of care it will offer.
Early Feedback from the Field
Early Laurel pilots have generated valuable feedback on what parts of the DMAT are working and what still needs refinement.
Strengths identified so far:
- Tool 1 is intuitive and straightforward to complete
- The assessment reports are clear and useful for strategic planning
- Organisations want to repeat the assessment annually to track progress over time
Areas for improvement:
- Tool 2's structure needs to be made clearer, particularly when one technology supports multiple services
- Users want an "I don't know" option to skip individual questions without abandoning the whole assessment
- Results downloads need to work reliably across all devices and browsers
EHTEL and the Laurel consortium are now incorporating this feedback actively into the latest iteration of the tool.
Shared at ICIC 2026
At ICIC 2026 — the International Conference on Integrated Care, held in Birmingham, England — EHTEL's Sara Canella presented the work done so far on DMAT to an engaged audience of practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from across Europe. The session on digital governance, maturity, and trustworthy data sharing confirmed both the strong resonance of the topic with the attendees and the scale of the challenge still ahead.
Sara Canella (EHTEL) presents the DMAT tool at ICIC 2026. Source: ICIC 2026
The conversations at the event reinforced a clear message: there is real appetite across the sector for tools like DMAT — and significant opportunity for EHTEL members to add further value to them.
What Comes Next?
The DMAT is still evolving, and the next steps are ambitious:
- Refining the tool based on user feedback from pilots
- Expanding testing across care organisations throughout Europe
- Analysing and benchmarking results across different contexts
- Making the tool freely available to all care organisations
Watch out for details soon on how EHTEL members can contribute — by testing and validating DMAT in their own care organisations, and helping to strengthen and enhance the tool for the whole health and care sector.
Find Out More
Digital Maturity Assessment Toolkit