On 17 December 2025, EHTEL and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) co-organised an online workshop dedicated to the Digital Maturity Assessment Toolkit (DMAT), a key innovation of the Laurel project. The session brought together representatives from three selected good practices of integrated long-term care (I-LTC). The speakers and attendees validated the tool, gathered structured feedback, and co-designed its refinement and future deployment.
Source: Laurel project
Context: strengthening digital readiness for integrated care
Across Europe, demographic ageing, workforce shortages, and the growing burden of chronic conditions are placing increasing pressure on health and social care systems. Digitally supported I-LTC models are widely recognised as essential to address these challenges. Yet their effectiveness depends on digital readiness, interoperability, and coordinated data use.
Laurel’s DMAT has been designed to help organisations assess and improve their digital readiness. It supports the transition toward better integrated, person-centred services and enables the adoption of smart solutions that enhance care delivery and professional capacity.
The workshop represented an important milestone in DMAT’s validation and co-design refinement phase that is preparing the tool for wider rollout in and beyond the Laurel community.
Real-world testing through three integrated care good practices
A key strength of the workshop was the involvement of three good practices which are real-world use cases. Together, they reflected policy integration, provider-level service delivery, and digital home-care innovation.
Use Case 1: Integrated social and health care at home – GENCAT (Spain)
GENCAT is the Government of Catalonia (one of Spain’s 19 autonomous regions and cities). GENCAT’s integrated social and health care model promotes the home as the natural place for care, aligning services with people’s needs, values, and preferences. The model is based on proactive, comprehensive, and coordinated care, supported by a single shared care plan involving professionals across sectors and the individual receiving care.
Core objectives include:
- Deploying the integrated home-care model across Catalonia.
- Identifying and disseminating aligned best practices.
- Monitoring and evaluating the impact of the integrated approach.
This example use case highlights how system-level coordination and shared planning are central to digital maturity in integrated care ecosystems.
Use Case 2: Comprehensive public health and social services – Althaia Foundation/SISS Manresa (Spain)
Althaia is a private non-profit foundation providing comprehensive health and social services, alongside research and teaching, in a people-centred and value-driven organisational framework.
As part of Catalonia’s public health system (called SISCAT), Althaia delivers services primarily to Catalonia’s department of health (CatSalut) patients. This use case illustrates the importance of assessing digital maturity in complex provider organisations spanning clinical, social, and academic functions.
Use Case 3: Digital home support ecosystem – ISIDORA platform (Italy)
ISIDORA, developed by Cooperativa La Meridiana, a Monza-based work cooperative, represents the digital innovation dimension of integrated long-term care. Created during the COVID-19 pandemic, its platform supports older people living at home and their caregivers, connecting them to essential health, social, and community services and transforming the home into a connected and engaging care environment. Accessible via web and Android, ISIDORA integrates four interconnected modules which form a comprehensive digital ecosystem and reflect a commitment to inclusive, sustainable, and human-centred elderly care.
Together, these three use cases – from Catalonia and northern Italy – are practices that provide diverse real-world environments for testing the DMAT across policy, organisational, and technological dimensions.
Key discussion points and emerging insights
The workshop generated rich feedback on how DMAT should evolve to support I-LTC ecosystems effectively. Discussion focused on four key areas for enhancement.
A first point of discussion concerned the scope of the assessment. Participants emphasised that integrated care is typically delivered through multi-organisational networks, often involving health, social, and community providers which operate under different governance departments. In this context, the current organisation-centred logic of the tool would benefit from clearer guidance on how it can be applied across collaborative systems and regional care pathways, rather than solely inside individual institutions.
A second major theme highlighted the persistent digital divide between healthcare and social care services. Stakeholders noted substantial differences in levels of digital maturity, interoperability capacity, and data governance practices. Social care settings – particularly residential and community-based services – often face structural and resource constraints that limit digital development. Addressing this digital imbalance was seen as essential for achieving genuinely integrated, person-centred care.
Thirdly, closely linked to the second issue, participants underlined the continuing fragmentation of information systems as one of the most significant barriers to coordination across sectors. Limited interoperability, especially in social care environments, restricts data sharing, continuity of care, and the effective use of digital tools to support decision-making. Strengthening interoperability therefore emerged as a central priority for both the refinement of the DMAT and broader system transformation.
Fourthly, stakeholders provided constructive suggestions to enhance the clarity and practical applicability and usability of the toolkit. Suggestions included the use of more accessible terminology, concrete examples of services and technologies, improved readability of the assessment structure, and the possibility of adding optional qualitative comment fields. Such features would allow organisations to capture context-specific nuances that cannot be fully reflected through quantitative scoring alone.
Additional insights into DMAT’s value
Participants strongly confirmed the strategic relevance of the DMAT. The tool was definitely recognised as a valuable mechanism for structured self-reflection and forward planning, which enables organisations to better understand their current level of digital maturity and to identify priorities for transformation.
Importantly, stakeholders highlighted that the main strength of the DMAT lies in supporting internal analysis and improvement, rather than in engaging in comparative benchmarking across heterogeneous organisations. They noted that any benchmarking approach should be limited to similar organisation types and comparable service contexts, thus ensuring that results are meaningful and actionable. More on the tool here.
Next steps
Building on the outcomes of this workshop, the Laurel consortium is now moving forward with a few coordinated activities. These include the finalisation of the online DMAT platform, followed by a pilot testing phase involving selected integrated care practices. Structured feedback collected in the pilot phase will inform the iterative refinement of both the tool and its accompanying guidance materials.
The longer-term objective is to prepare the DMAT for wider rollout in the Laurel community and across external integrated long-term care ecosystems, thereby supporting broader digital transformation efforts throughout Europe.
Looking ahead
This December 2025 workshop demonstrated both the potential and complexity of assessing digital maturity in integrated long-term care.
Through stakeholder-driven refinement, real-world validation, and methodological rigour, the Laurel DMAT is emerging as a practical enabler of Europe’s care transformation.
For EHTEL members, 2026 represents a key opportunity to help shape this tool, which may influence how integrated care organisations can plan their digital future.
In 2026:
- Follow what Laurel achieves by getting involved with its community.
- Learn about DMAT’s next steps.
- Attend workshops that Laurel organises or to which it contributes.
Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or HaDEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.