In this insight, Sara Canella from EHTEL reflects on sharing the Laurel Digital Maturity Assessment Tool at ICIC26, exploring how care organisations can understand their digital readiness and prepare to use technology in ways that support more integrated, person-centred care.
Is your care organisation ready to go digital? Here’s how we’re finding out
Imagine a hospital that wants to offer home care to older people after they are discharged – not just in-person visits, but a hybrid service using video calls, remote health monitoring, fall detection, and medication reminders. Great idea. But where do you start?
That’s exactly the kind of question the Laurel Digital Maturity Assessment Tool (DMAT) was built to answer. And at the International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC 2026) in Birmingham, I had the chance to share what we’ve learned in Laurel so far.
What is “digital maturity” – and why does it matter?
Digital maturity is simply how ready an organisation is to adopt and make the most of digital technology. It’s not just about having the right software – it’s about leadership, infrastructure, staff skills, cybersecurity, and how well different services can work together digitally.
Digital tools can transform care, making care more integrated and person-centred, but only if the organisations providing that care are ready to use the tools well.
The Laurel Project and the DMAT
The Laurel Project is an EU-funded research initiative working to improve integrated long-term care (I-LTC) across Europe. “Integrated” means care that connects health, social care, and other services around the needs of the person – rather than each service operating in its own silo.
As part of Laurel, our colleagues at EHTEL (a European network advancing digital health transformation) and UPM developed the DMAT – a practical online toolkit that helps care organisations assess their digital readiness at four levels:
- The organisation as a whole – governance, infrastructure, cybersecurity
- The specific care programme or initiative
- The individual services being delivered
- The digital equipment and technologies in use and/or planned
How does DMAT work in practice?
To make the DMAT real during the session, we used a fictional scenario – meet Rona.
Rona has been hired by a general hospital to set up a new home care service for older people who are being discharged. The future service will combine in-person visits with remote digital support – think video consultations, vital signs monitors, fall detectors, and SOS alarms.
Before choosing any digital support, Rona needs to understand what the hospital is actually ready to do. That’s where the DMAT comes in. DMAT comprises two tools – Tool 1 and Tool 2.
Tool 1 helps Rona assess the hospital’s overall digital maturity – it covers everything from IT capability and interoperability to digital leadership.
Tool 2 goes deeper: Rona sees that for each service and each technology, it can assess readiness across three dimensions – system, service and technology.
The result? A clear picture of whether the organisation is ready, and what needs to happen before digital technologies can genuinely improve care.
What are people saying about DMAT?
Early pilots gave us really useful feedback.
What’s working well:
- Tool 1 is intuitive and easy to complete
- The reports are clear and useful for strategic planning
- Organisations want to repeat the assessment every year to track their progress over time
What needs improving:
- Tool 2’s structure needs to be clearer – especially when one technology supports multiple services
- Users want an “I don’t know” option, so they can skip questions they can’t answer without abandoning the whole survey
- Downloads of results need to work reliably across all devices and browsers
We’re taking all of this feedback on board.
What’s next?
The DMAT is still evolving. Next steps include:
- Refining the tool based on user feedback
- Testing the tool with as many care organisations as possible across Europe
- Analysing and benchmarking results
- Ultimately, making the tool freely available to everyone
The ICIC 2026 session on digital governance, maturity and trustworthy data sharing was exactly the kind of conversation that moves this work forward. Hearing from practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from across Europe reminded me just how much this topic resonates with people – and how much work there still is to do.
A huge thank you to everyone who joined and contributed to the session. Your feedback shapes the DMAT tool directly.
Useful links
Laurel Project: https://laurelproject.eu/digital-maturity-assessment-tool/
DMAT web link: https://laureus.gatv.es/
Sara Canella
EHTEL