The Healthy City 4.0 project ranked fifth out of 54 proposals submitted to the Start 4.0 call for proposals, with 19 selected for funding.

The project was built on the vision and input of Luciano Grasso, who shared the design ideas (and enthusiasm) defined within the activities of the “Health City Manager,” capitalized within the project concepts emerged in recent months within the animation activities of the Association, particularly in the Healthy City thematic area. The project included a letter of endorsement from the Association and a letter signed by Francesco Berti Riboli as the representative of the end-users.
The project involves four companies of the Association, namely La Sia, Dedalus, ETT, and Ameri Communication, representing a cross-section of the entrepreneurial fabric operating in the territory, from large international enterprises to Genoese technological SMEs, to companies specialized in communication and dissemination in the health context. The Healthy City 4.0 project has the highest industrial investment among funded projects, with a budget of over one million euros, against 400k euros of public funding, demonstrating the commitment of companies and the leveraging effect of public resources.

The project aims to develop and validate innovative services for the safety and quality of healthcare services and infrastructure in a real environment (hospital and healthcare setting), based on the use of advanced digital technologies: artificial intelligence (linguistic model), Digital Twin of infrastructures, and expansion of a Clinical Knowledge Platform (CKP) capable of meeting the needs for improving safety, quality standards, and response capacity to unforeseen events in the field of healthcare infrastructure.

The different modules will be designed to meet the needs of professionals, families, and patients (customizing the content according to different user profiles taking into account the characteristics of the user) in receiving clear and adapted instructions and procedures based on the type of user (and in line with the protocols of national, regional strategic regulations, and/or existing hospital procedures).
The development of the hospital service safety and quality platform will focus on some critical pain points for professionals, patients, and patients’ families:
• Work-related stress: doctors are subjected to significant pressures and responsibilities (risk of errors/wrong decisions, timeliness of interventions, etc.). Among the operators most exposed to the risk of “burnout” are nurses, social workers, and operators who provide support to people in difficulty.
• Emergency management (fires): the risk of fires is present both in hospitals and in private structures such as nursing homes; the latter have always been considered high fire-risk structures. In the hospital setting, there are also risks related to the presence of flammable materials and equipment.
• Manual handling of loads: in this context, it is necessary to consider not only the risk related to manual handling of loads but also the need to lift non-self-sufficient patients. Activities to ensure the cybersecurity of developed systems and the security of data used and produced will be of fundamental importance.
Furthermore, the adaptability and replicability of the proposed technological solution in other contexts related to other critical infrastructures in the built environment will be studied during the project, and communication and dissemination activities will be planned to maximize impacts in the local and national context and give rise to a real “Genoa model” that can be enhanced and scaled up to other European Union funding programs such as Horizon Europe.

The solution will be conceived with a modular approach to allow for the integration of other modules in the future and expand the platform’s offerings in support of the Health City Manager’s mission.
In this context, the Genoa Smart City Association will ensure value-added coordination with the initiatives and assets that the Municipality and the territory have developed and are developing, promoting the emergence of further design ideas that broaden the base of actively involved members and attract new entities on board the Genoa Smart City Association.