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The University Osnabrück and the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück and regional partners recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to establish a Healthcare Campus. The aim of the Healthcare Campus is to develop innovative concepts for delivering patient care in the Osnabrück region. It brings together academia, networks, enterprises, healthcare providers and local authorities. Financed by the State of Lower Saxony, the project „The Learning Healthcare System in the Region Osnabrück Emsland (ROSE)” is a central activity within the Healthcare Campus. This project makes use of the learning paradigm. Providing feedback is the driving mechanism to achieve progress. Research provides the feedback to the healthcare providers and local authorities, in order to optimise the current practice in urban and rural areas of the region. The feedback mechanism is based on data from practice, which play the central role in turning evidence-based-practice into practice-based-evidence and putting translation at the start, not at the end of the project. Both universities coordinate their activities within the ROSE project to attain the goals of the Healthcare Campus Osnabrück. The model with five measures for the implementation is presented. It builds upon the wealth of existing bachelor and masters programs in healthcare and unites research, PhD programs and translation of scientific results into practice.

The number of patients seeking treatment in emergency departments is rising, although many governments are seeking to reduce expenditure on health. Emergency departments must achieve more with the same resources or perform the same functions with fewer resources. Patients demand higher emergency clinical care quality, with low waiting times viewed as a key quality criterion by many patients. The objective of this study was to create an improved working system in emergency departments that cuts patient waiting times for first specialty physician contact. Techniques from industrial flow management were applied to the working process of an emergency department and the concept was named 'First View.' A total of 3269 patient contacts using the First View Concept during a treatment month showed statistical significance. Before introduction, a total 3230 patients in a comparative treatment month had a median waiting time before the first doctor contact of 47.6 min, a first quartile waiting time of 36.1 min, and a third quartile waiting time of 62.7 min. After introduction, 3269 patients had a median waiting time before first specialty physician contact of 11.2 min, a first quartile waiting time of 9.1 min, and a third quartile waiting time of 15.2 min. Industrial flow concepts can achieve significant improvements in emergency department workflows in countries in which sufficient numbers of specialty physicians are available. More attention to the organization of emergency department working processes is needed, especially involving lean management.

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