Problem addressed
When patients require intensive hospital care, distance often becomes an invisible but heavy burden. Informal caregivers and patients frequently face stress, exhaustion and financial pressure due to long travel times, lack of affordable accommodation near hospitals, and the uncertainty of finding a place to stay at short notice. This added strain affects wellbeing, care quality and recovery, and is insufficiently addressed by existing health and social care systems. Stay Close addresses this gap by turning proximity into a shared, community-based solution rather than an individual struggle.
Innovative solution
Stay Close is an innovative, digitally enabled care solution that transforms proximity from an individual challenge into a shared, systemic response. Through a dedicated digital platform and integrated communication flows, Stay Close enables safe matching, professional coordination and quality monitoring between hospitals, cities, host families, patients and informal caregivers. By embedding community-based solidarity into formal care pathways, Stay Close creates a scalable model that complements health systems and strengthens social infrastructure across regions and countries.
Key results and benefits
Stay Close delivers clear benefits at multiple levels. Patients and informal caregivers experience reduced stress, lower financial burden and improved wellbeing through reliable access to nearby accommodation. Hospitals benefit from improved patient and family experience, smoother care pathways and reduced non-medical pressure on care teams. Cities and communities gain a scalable model that activates local solidarity, strengthens social cohesion and embeds care proximity as part of a resilient social infrastructure.
Potential for mainstreaming
Stay Close has strong potential for mainstreaming because it addresses a widely shared and structurally unmet need within health and social care systems. The digitally supported, community-based model is designed to be replicable and adaptable across hospitals, cities and countries, while integrating smoothly into existing care pathways. By combining professional coordination, public–private partnerships and local solidarity, Stay Close can evolve from a pilot initiative into a standard complementary service within mainstream care and social policy.
