With Executive Decree no. 16871 of 6 October 2026, the Calabria Region approved the final ranking for the first batch of applications under the call “STEP Calabria – Aid for critical technologies”. Among the projects selected for funding is DLVSystem’s DLV-HERO.

The call implements in Calabria the STEP, the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform, and supports companies developing digital and deep-tech technologies considered critical for the Union: innovative, with strong economic potential and able to reduce dependence on external suppliers.

What DLV-HERO is

DLV-HERO (Hospital Employee Roster Optimization) is a platform for the automatic scheduling of healthcare staff. Planning hospital rosters means juggling hundreds of constraints: contracts, mandatory rest periods, the skills each ward and operating theatre requires, absences. Today this is often done by hand, or with tools that do not explain their choices.

DLV-HERO tackles the problem with neuro-symbolic AI:

• the DLV logic engine only builds plans that satisfy every rule, and every shift can be traced back to its reasons;

• machine learning models learn from historical data to find better solutions in less time;

• integration with hospital systems and booking centres (HL7/FHIR standard) turns optimised rosters into new slots patients can book.

The project will take the technology from laboratory prototype to a system demonstrated in a real operating environment, with a pilot in two healthcare facilities in Calabria. The goals are to increase coverage of specialist shifts by 10% and to reduce waiting times in the wards involved by up to 20%.

For us, DLV-HERO shows what an AI that reasons can do: complex organisational decisions that always comply with the rules and can always be explained.

The project 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. CUP J25H25000760005.