Co-funded by the European Union

Programme: PR Calabria ERDF ESF+ 2021-2027

Measure: Priority 1 STEP · Action 1.6.1 — Support for investment in digital technologies and deep-tech innovation · Call “STEP Calabria – Aid for critical technologies”

CUP: J25H25000760005

COR: 26299099

Grant: Calabria Region Decree no. 16871 of 6 October 2026

Period: January 2026 — December 2027

The context

Planning hospital rosters means juggling hundreds of constraints: employment contracts, mandatory rest periods, the skills each ward and operating theatre requires, staff absences and availability. In many facilities this is still done by hand, or with tools that produce a plan without explaining how they got there. The result is rosters that are hard to check, workloads that are unevenly spread and services that could be offered but are left uncovered.

The solution

DLV-HERO (Hospital Employee Roster Optimization) is a platform for the automatic scheduling of healthcare staff, delivered as a cloud service:

• a neuro-symbolic AI engine that builds the rosters;

• a web application for planners and a mobile app for staff;

• integration with hospital information systems and booking centres through the HL7/FHIR standard, so that optimised rosters turn into new slots patients can book.

DLV-HERO is an organisational support tool: it makes no clinical decisions and does not affect patient care.

How it reasons

At its heart is DLV, our reasoning engine based on Answer Set Programming. The rules (collective agreements, rest periods, skills, minimum staffing) are written declaratively, and the engine only builds plans that satisfy all of them: hard constraints are guaranteed by construction, not “as far as possible”. Every shift can be traced back to the rules that produced it. The result is explainable scheduling, auditable and fairer for staff.

Alongside logical reasoning, machine learning models learn from historical data, such as absence peaks or seasonal demand, and steer the engine towards better solutions in less time, even for facilities with thousands of employees.

The pilot

The project takes DLV’s healthcare technology from laboratory prototype (TRL 4) to a system demonstrated in a real operating environment (TRL 7), with a pilot in two healthcare facilities in Calabria. The goals:

• increase coverage of specialist shifts by 10%;

• reduce waiting times in the pilot wards by up to 20%.

The project is also strengthening DLVSystem’s research team with new roles.

Funding

DLV-HERO was selected under the PR Calabria ERDF ESF+ 2021-2027 programme (Priority 1 STEP, Action 1.6.1) and is carried out with resources from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Italian State and the Calabria Region.