Webinars
Laurel and its partners organise webinars on a regular basis to share the project's findings with a wide audience.
Check out the recordings below to catch up.
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From Rights to Reality: EHDS and Patient Needs in Integrated Long-Term Care
People living with complex, chronic, or age-related conditions often depend on integrated long-term care that spans health, social, community, and informal care settings. While the European Health Data Space establishes new rights for EU citizens to access, download, and share their electronic health data, data fragmentation across care systems can still make coordinated, person-centred care difficult to achieve in practice.
This 90-minute Laurel webinar explored how EHDS rights and citizen-controlled data tools can better respond to the needs of patients and informal carers in integrated long-term care. It focused on how digital data sharing can support continuity, coordination, empowerment, and trust for people living with complex care needs.
More than a discussion, the session brought together regional experience, European innovation, and patient perspectives to examine how digital rights can move from legislation to real-world care integration. Examples included Flanders’ person-centred care model, the xShare Yellow Button for citizen data portability, and EUPATI’s work on patient education and meaningful engagement.
The webinar contributed to identifying what is still needed to ensure that data-enabled integrated long-term care delivers practical benefits for citizens, carers, and care systems across Europe.
Speakers
Hanne Vuegen — Department of Care, Flemish Government
Shared the Flanders experience, including Alivia, an interdisciplinary digital care planning tool that places citizens at the centre of their care team, and Caring Neighbourhoods, which connects informal and formal care, prevention, and social inclusion.
Mitchell Silva — EUPATI, European Patients’ Academy on Therapeutic Innovation
Explored the patient perspective on EHDS and integrated long-term care, including patient education, digital literacy, co-design of tools, data rights awareness, and active care co-management.
Michael Strubin — xShare Project
Presented the xShare project and the Yellow Button, a one-click mechanism enabling citizens to access, download, and share their health data in interoperable formats. The presentation explored its potential to support safe transitions, carer involvement, and data sharing within integrated long-term care workflows.
Presentation
Ensuring Equitable Integrated Long-Term Care for Rural and Vulnerable Communities
People living in rural areas and those in vulnerable situations can face significant barriers to accessing integrated long-term care across Europe. Geographic distance, workforce shortages, limited digital infrastructure, and wider social vulnerability can all reduce access to timely, coordinated, and person-centred care.
This 75-minute Laurel webinar explored how integrated long-term care systems can remain accessible and equitable for underserved communities. It focused on the practical, organisational, and policy challenges involved in delivering care in rural settings and ensuring that services respond effectively to people facing disadvantage or exclusion.
More than a discussion, the session brought together European projects, policy perspectives, and real-world examples to highlight promising approaches to reducing inequalities in care access, including innovative service models, digital solutions, and community-based responses.
The webinar contributed to shaping more equitable integrated long-term care policy and practice across Europe.
Speakers
Miriam Dolan — EURIPA
Shared perspectives on the realities and needs of rural healthcare, including the challenges faced by health professionals and communities, workforce shortages, access barriers, and implications for integrated care models.
Thomas Bakratsas — White Research, INSPIRE Project
Presented innovative approaches to improving access to health and care services in rural areas, including digital and community-based solutions and lessons learned from implementation.
Anastasis Papanagnou and John Zaras — SquareDev, EQUICARES Project
Explored approaches to equitable care provision for people in vulnerable situations, with a focus on digital AI-based solutions to reduce disparities, improve inclusion, and consider the policy and organisational implications for integrated care.
Presentation
Informal Carers: Enabling Better Support in Integrated Long-Term Care
Informal carers — often family members or friends — provide essential support to older people and those living with chronic or cognitive conditions across Europe. Yet their contribution remains too often invisible, under-recognised, and insufficiently supported by formal care systems.
This 90-minute Laurel webinar explored how integrated long-term care systems can better enable informal carers to care safely, sustainably, and with confidence. It focused on the skills, tools, and support structures carers need — and on how health and social care services can work more effectively alongside them.
More than a discussion, the session brought together European projects and real-world examples to highlight practical approaches to strengthening carers’ skills, resilience, and role within integrated care.
The webinar contributed to shaping a more inclusive and supportive future for informal carers across Europe.
Speakers
Elisabeth Carlstedt — WELLCARE Project
Shared insights on strengthening the mental wellbeing and resilience of long-term care workers and informal carers, and on addressing occupational and non-occupational risks affecting carers’ health.
Cornelia Feichtinger — BetterCare Project
Presented cross-national perspectives on preventing carer errors at home and improving safety for care recipients through collaboration and shared learning.
Giosuè Ruggeri and Maddalena Gambirasio — Caregiver Bergamo (Italy)
Showcased a regional, multi-stakeholder approach to building integrated support networks for informal carers.
Lynne Dennehy — Family Carers Ireland
Shared experience from the Family Carers Support Project, focusing on assessing carers’ needs and strengthening coping skills through accessible online support.
Presentation
New Competencies and Skills for Healthcare Professionals in Integrated Long-Term Care
This webinar explores the skills and competencies needed to support more integrated, person-centred long-term care systems across Europe. As demand for long-term care grows and services become more complex, workforce development, digital readiness and cultural sensitivity are emerging as critical foundations for change.
In the first presentation, Orazio Fiorini (EASPD / Care4Skills) introduces the Care for Skills Erasmus+ project, which focuses on upskilling and reskilling the long-term care workforce. He presents the Rapid Response Training developed after COVID-19, key research findings on staff shortages, digitalisation and skills gaps, and future scenarios and personas for long-term care workers, alongside the Large-Scale Partnership on Long-Term Care under the EU Pact for Skills.
Next, Jorge Alfonso (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) examines digital skills as core care competencies, showing how everyday digital tools, data use and AI-assisted decision-making fit into integrated long-term care.
Selma Kadi (European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research) then discusses person-centred, diversity-sensitive care, highlighting barriers faced by older migrants and introducing practical training materials from the DISCo Erasmus+ project. The session concludes with live polls and a Q&A on workforce training, digital inclusion, cultural competence and support for informal carers.
Presentation
Digital Innovation for Integrated Long-Term Care: Transforming Europe’s Care Systems
Europe faces significant demographic challenges, including ageing populations and increasing demand for long-term care services. Digital technologies have the potential to reshape Integrated Long-Term Care (I-LTC) by improving care quality, personalisation, accessibility, and efficiency.
However, the successful integration of digital solutions at a systems level requires coordinated strategies, evidence-based policies, and alignment with European values like equity and sustainability.
This webinar explored how digital solutions can support the transformation of European care systems. Given the challenges of providing care to a fast-growing population of older adults, at least four actions are urgently needed.
EHTEL digital health facilitator, Sara Canella, guided the conversation with the panellists. Four panellists shared their opinions on how to leverage digital tools for systemic change.
They represented four different stakeholder perspectives: technology providers, healthcare organisations, competence centres in the field of care, and the international health-related organisation – the World Health Organization (WHO). Attendees also had the chance to ask questions and share their own views.
Presentations
Moderated Discussion
Creating the Conditions for Long-Term Care
This webinar was organised in collaboration with IFIC Scotland and took place on 16 April, 2025
This webinar explored international policy and practice in integrated person-centred long- term care and support.
Members of the Laurel discussed the progress on its aim to create actionable policies and training tools to support high-quality integrated long-term care across Europe. This was complemented by information on WHO Europe’s work programme to support transformation of long-term care eco-systems, promoting quality and leveraging digital and social innovations. The session also featured an example of social innovation and intergenerational practice in Shared Lives Plus, the membership organisation supporting Shared Lives schemes and carers, and the home of the Homeshare UK Network.
Click here to access more resources from the webinar including slides and a detailed report.
Recording
Digital Transformation of Long-Term Care: Innovations from the Field
On 16 May, 2024, a well-attended EHTEL Imagining 2029 webinar - organised together with the support of the Laurel project - brought together EHTEL members and friends and Laurel consortium members. Close to 30 people attended the webinar.
EHTEL Digital Health Facilitators, Tino MARTI and Sara CANELLA, ran the show.
The webinar:
- Showcased a truly innovative application of digital technology to improve long-term care.
- Discussed how best to identify other potential applications for the near future.
- Generated a series of reflections on how to assess the innovations.
The first part of the webinar concentrated on digital technologies in support of people with long-term care needs in the city of Manresa, in the otherwise rural, central region of Catalonia in Spain. It examined Manresa's, and the Althaia hospital's, experience with digitalising long-term care. Bartomeu AYALA (Head of Training and Professional Development at the Althaia Foundation) presented the SiSS Manresa success story.
The second part of the webinar was more theoretical. Jorge Alfonso KURANO of the University Polytechnic of Madrid, Spain introduced a potential framework for the analysis of high-level technologies applied to the long-term care sector.