Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing care - but how do we make it empathetic and user-centered?
The care sector is undergoing a fundamental transformation with artificial intelligence (AI). But how do we ensure that this technology remains empathetic and puts people at the center?
The answer lies in our own creative power:
We, as responsible practitioners and users, must actively help shape the algorithms. After all, algorithms are nothing more than guidelines for our future - and we should not leave this to others.
The LINDERA x Myneva Ladies Apero at the Altenpflege Messe 2025 on April 9 at 3.30 p.m. provides the framework for discussing these issues. In this exclusive format for female leaders in the care sector, experts will come together to network, share their experiences and actively shape the future of the industry. One of these leading experts is Eva Lettenmeier, who provides exciting insights in the following interview.
Eva Lettenmeier heads up the Care Industry division at contec and brings her expertise in the areas of HR, organization, digitalization, marketing and communication to all other consulting fields. Her professional career shows a consistent focus on change management and restructuring, paired with a hands-on mentality and a high degree of solution orientation and openness to new things - especially AI.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing care - but how do we make it empathetic and user-centered?
Eva Lettenmeier : AI is fundamentally changing all areas of our lives. And not just care. It holds an incredible promise, but also an equal threat, the fear that control will slip away from us, that our lives will be determined by someone we don't know and have never seen. But who knows us. Just like in social media today, where what we see and perceive or don't perceive is decided by algorithms.
The answer:
We have to shape the algorithms ourselves. We as responsible practitioners. As users. In the best interests of the people we care for, look after and support. With heart and mind. Let's not leave it to others to write the "rules of action" for our future. That's what algorithm means: Rules of action.
Eva Lettenmeier : For me, professionalism means competence. What we can say in general terms is that women find it difficult to claim competence where they have even the slightest doubt about themselves. And based on my long professional experience in a world that was still completely male many years ago, I would definitely say that twice as much competence weighed about half as much with women as with male colleagues.
But a lot has changed since then. But the most important learning for young, female managers is always that the expertise they have acquired with so much sweat and zeal also puts them in the corner of the "persuaders" and sometimes also "technical idiots" in the organizations.
So always remain balanced and open-minded and don't put your personal skills in the background.If you want to get to the top, and you should, your professionalism could end up standing in your way!
Eva Lettenmeier : Nursing really does have the problem that it is far, far, far too homogeneous. You can only switch from a specialist career to a management role and then learn "leadership" in 100 hours of further training on the side.
A good manager absolutely needs to have seen completely different perspectives, if you ask me. Ideally different industries, companies and cultures. How many people do I know in nursing with "chimney careers" who have risen from training to regional management and even higher without any change of scenery. Is that a good thing? I think not.
If you change jobs, have expert functions, manage small teams, a staff unit, a project, if you've managed to change things without any formal management responsibility, to move people, to create clarity - that's cool.
In organizational charts, we still think totally functionally and hierarchically and not in terms of roles and responsibilities and jointly performing teams. Anyone who thinks that they can only lead if they have absolute disciplinary authority and can punish people under labor law should not aspire to a leadership role.