EMANet Charité Berlin - Emergency and Acute Medicine Network for Health Care Research

EMANet (Emergency and Acute Medicine Network for Health Care Research) Berlin is a network of

•     the Department of Emergency Medicine
•     the Institute for Medical Sociology and Rehabilitation Science,
•     the Medical clinic with focus on psychosomatics
•     other scientific institutes of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin,
•     the emergency departments of the Berlin-Mitte district and
•     other important stakeholders in the care of emergency patients.

The aim of EMANet is to establish a sustainable interdisciplinary health services research structure in emergency and acute medicine with a focus on vulnerable, predominantly elderly patients suffering from multiple chronic diseases.

The partners combine expertise in health services research, medical sociology, health economics, epidemiology, scientific methodology and clinical know-how in the care of emergency and acute care patients, general medicine, psychosomatics, geriatrics and traumatology.

EMANet has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since December 2016. It aims to improve care in the German healthcare system. To this end, the use of various areas of the healthcare system by patients is being investigated and their expectations of care determined. Emergency departments are located at the interface between outpatient and inpatient care. Their utilization structure is considered an indicator of the quality of a healthcare system. Proposals for improving care therefore include measures that avoid or at least reduce emergency department utilization and improve care within emergency departments.

In the first funding phase (2016-2019), a comprehensive data set was created for three exemplary emergency patient populations, consisting of quantitative and qualitative collected primary data, as well as secondary data from routine hospital and health insurance data. Based on the results of the first funding phase, a second funding phase (2020-2023) explores research questions in greater depth and develops and implements interventions.

The focus of EMANet is on older patients with several chronic diseases (so-called multimorbid patients). This patient group is growing steadily due to demographic change in Germany. So far, however, it has been insufficiently researched.

EMANet thus makes a contribution to knowledge on the following questions, among others:

•     How are existing structures and facilities of the health care system used by multimorbid patients?
•     Does the health care system meet the special nursing and psychosocial needs of multimorbid patients?