NextCare @ Home: Implementing AI Solutions within Integrated Healthcare in Rural Areas

NextCare focuses on improving healthcare in rural areas where people often have less access to services, longer travel times to hospitals, fewer specialists, and more older citizens and people with chronic diseases. Healthcare systems are also facing staff shortages and increasing pressure to deliver more care with limited resources. The project looks at how integrated care and artificial intelligence can help move treatment and prevention closer to people’s homes.
The project has three main parts. First, it studies how integrated care is understood and organised in the participating Baltic Sea Region countries and identifies barriers through interviews and existing examples. Second, it looks at the implementation of AI solutions, especially prediction models, and analyses existing frameworks, gaps, and barriers. Third, it combines the results into a practical guide for implementing AI prediction models in integrated care and tests it through workshops, interviews, and feedback from relevant stakeholders.
The main target groups are hospitals and medical centers, local public authorities, and NGOs representing patients and elderly people. These groups help identify real needs, test use cases, give feedback, and make sure the final guide is useful in practical healthcare and care settings.

Europe’s healthcare systems face increasing pressure to deliver more services with fewer resources, particularly as populations age. This challenge is especially acute in rural areas, where access to healthcare is limited. To meet these demands, there is a strong need to shift treatment and prevention from hospitals to patients’ homes, supported by integrated healthcare solutions and the use of AI. However, the implementation and scaling of such innovations are often hindered by legal and regulatory barriers, lack of competences, fragmented data sharing, and differing organisational structures across the Baltic Sea Region. NextCare addresses these challenges by fostering collaboration between hospitals, local authorities, and NGOs representing patients. The project aims to strengthen learning across integrated healthcare systems and promote the adoption of AI-based solutions that support home-based care. By developing a practical implementation guide, NextCare will provide methods, tools, and recommendations for applying AI in integrated healthcare across the Baltic Sea Region. The outcomes will support better patient outcomes and more resilient healthcare systems, creating a model that can be replicated throughout the region and beyond.

The overall goal of NextCare is to improve access to healthcare in rural areas by supporting the use of AI solutions in integrated care. The project aims to make digital technology easier to use in public healthcare services by developing a common guide for implementing AI in clinical and cross-sectoral practice. This is needed because many AI solutions already exist, but they are not widely used in healthcare due to technological, data-related, legal, regulatory, organisational, social and cultural barriers.
The project also seeks to improve cooperation between hospitals, local authorities and NGOs representing patients. At present, this cooperation is limited, and clear ways to jointly implement and evaluate AI solutions are missing. NextCare will support a new way of working where these groups share knowledge, test use cases, give feedback and learn from each other.
Another goal is to help service providers tailor care better to citizens’ needs. AI can help identify people who may benefit most from personalised care, but healthcare providers need clear guidelines and processes to use such solutions safely and proactively.
The project also aims to improve equal access to services. Rural healthcare systems often have fewer resources, skills and infrastructure to develop and use AI, which can increase the gap between urban and rural healthcare. NextCare focuses on rural areas in the partner countries to reduce this gap.
The main concrete output will be a practical implementation guide with methods, tools and recommendations for using AI in integrated healthcare across the Baltic Sea Region. The guide will be tested and improved through interviews, questionnaires, workshops, pilot activities and feedback from target groups.

Through pilot testing and validation, NextCare aims to improve the readiness of rural healthcare actors to use AI in integrated care. The project will create positive change by helping hospitals, local public authorities and NGOs better understand the barriers to AI adoption and how these can be addressed in practice. The main impact will come from a practical implementation guide with methods, tools and recommendations that can support future use of AI-supported integrated healthcare. The project is expected to strengthen learning, trust and cooperation between target groups and provide a model that can be adapted and used across the Baltic Sea Region.

Interreg Baltic Sea Region (BSR) 2021-2027

Interreg Baltic Sea Region