PATHFINDER is a concept for an innovative and novel crisis management system with enormous potential to make health and care organisations and their staff more capable and resilient to face the crisis. PATHFINDER will enable a powerful and systematic change towards a proactive crisis management within the health and care organisations, which encompasses all planning, prevention, management, and post-crisis phases. PATHFINDER is based on multidisciplinary teamwork, continuous stakeholder involvement, and prompt crisis communication to the population.

The PATHFINDER solution and toolkit enables a prompt, more efficient and easy-to-use response for adapting health and care service delivery to the new circumstances and structural conditions.

The PATHFINDER solution is composed of:

• The Control Center – a decision support system (DSS) for health and care senior representatives and stakeholders (primary target group) and care staff (secondary target group). This includes the following components:
• A Business Intelligence (BI) module where all imported and entered data are collected, cleaned and analysed through advanced analytics tools (including also machine learning and artificial intelligence, AI), with access to user-friendly dashboards, key performance indicators (KPIs) and synthesis data reports;
• 1. A Workflow Engine (WE) enabling the design, ex-ante assessment and comparison of different alternative options for care pathways, as well as hosting the knowledge on crisis protocols and training materials (Knowledge Base Academy) based on lessons learnt from previous crises;
  2. A Communications Engine (CE) based on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to prepare and disseminate textual (including infographics) and audio messages;
  3. A Data Interface (DI) layer where data on citizens and patients, care staff, and infrastructure can be imported into PATHFINDER through different import, data upload and data entry methods;
• A Citizen’s App that will constitute the single point of access by citizens and patients to the news and information concerning the systemic crisis and the response by the health and care organisations and stakeholders. It includes:
  1. A general dashboard with public health guidelines, real-time updates, and infographics;
  2. An AI-powered chatbot and self-assessment tool to enhance engagement and facilitate communication.