As of 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, one only needs to dial 116117 to find an answer in terms of social and health care throughout the territory of ULSS3 Serenissima, from Chioggia to Quarto d’Altino via Venice and Riviera del Brenta. The number replaces the one previously active for the continuity of care service (the better known medical guard) and offers support for the new services of territorial medicine, directing citizens to solutions to both health and social needs. The number is active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be accessed from landlines and cell phones for anyone in the Venetian territory, including tourists and visitors passing through, since cell phones, by hooking up to local telephone cells, are considered part of the territory’s utilities.
The number, manned by 36 operators working multiple shifts, has been activated, After an experiment on Bassano del Grappa (thanks to the different area code from the rest of the province of Vicenza), from the headquarters of the Territorial Operations Center at Piazzale Giustiniani in Venice which will soon be joined by the second central: “After seven months of testing on patients in District 1 of Bassano del Grappa, with 2,600 interventions, 16,000 calls and a level of satisfaction detected at 98% , the service offered goes live by extending to all the inhabitants of the territory of Ulss 3 Serenissima – Veneto Health Councillor Manuela Lanzarin explained at the presentation – by June 2026 it will be gradually extended to the entire territory of the ULSS of the Veneto Region by coordinating all activities from Mestre and the Vicenza area With the two Central Operations Centers working in parallel“.
Central 116117, headed by Francesca Ferraretto, in addition to the technical administrative staff that collects patient information by sorting requests, also consists of a general practitioner and nurses in the Mestre office, which, in addition to serving as the Territorial Operations Center, will also be the regional hub to manage and sort the service for all ULSS within an 800-meter facility at the forefront of energy sustainability and information technology. The facility, built by technicians from ULSS3 Serenissima, was completed in October 2024 with an investment of 3 million 315 thousand euros, including 1 million 152 thousand euros from PNRR funds, another 1 million 402 thousand euros from regional allocations and 760 thousand euros from the Venetian ULSS.
The novelty of the entire service is to manage directly by voice the needs of citizens, both in the health and social-health non-emergency spheres, diverting any emergencies directly to 118, improving the points of contact between public health and users so as to make territorial medicine more efficient, providing clear and direct answers, as well as suggesting medical services, even to those who will visit the territory as tourists, in fact when fully operational the service will also be multi-lingual, after having extended to all ULSS, starting with the 4 Eastern Veneto in September and 1 Dolomites in October. Alongside the specially trained switchboard operators, on-call health workers will be able to intervene for direct consultations, providing an initial telephone health triage that directs the patient to the most appropriate course of care.
When to call 116117? For all those non-emergency health needs , either for short, targeted questions or for a consultation. Opposite, after an initial automated step, one can converse with human staff trained to frame the need of the citizen caller, who through a series of precise questions will be able to give comprehensive answers and guide toward the best solution. Not only that, medical and nursing staff are on hand to intervene for a more in-depth consultation, so that they can triage either to a medical examination for further investigation to be carried out within the day or, in the most urgent cases, within two hours of the call. In doing so, the continuity of care physician (medical guard) from the nearest Community House or District will contact the patient to schedule the visit, even at home.
In this way, the number can be used for all those conditions such as prescription medications, adverse food reactions, skin manifestations, and fevers, which do not require emergency intervention but still need assistance or advice from health personnel, especially at night or on holidays. Important to remember, however, that this support also applies to social-health problems, such as those related to non-self-sufficiency, disability, mental health , and all the problems that travelers and tourists may face in the territory. Central 116117 is also interconnected with the Community Homes already active in the area, which will receive patients namely those in Noale, Lido di Venezia and Favaro. “Remember that this number will be the standard for all of Europe for continuity of care,” adds Francesca Ferraretto. and will complement the general practice service. We are in the experimental phase, but when fully operational, from June 2026, 116117 will be multilingual to really reach everyone “.
“We have invested heavily in the personnel in the Territorial Operations Center who will remain the main actor in the operation of the service, supported by artificial intelligence – Engineer Silvia Baldan, director of operational systems at ULSS3, explains. digital technology is supporting the operators, it is activated to collect basic information before transferring citizens to a human being and is responsible for transcribing the call, in this way it aggregates data to help the operator within a closed digital environment that allows research as quickly as possible to give answers from ULSS sites and documents. Thus, our model is not generative, like ChatGPT and the like, but side-by-side with the processes that manage operators helping them in assisting citizens“.
“The technology will be the same for the two Territorial Operations Centers in Mestre and Vicenza, the second will be based at the former San Bortolo Seminary, which will work symbiotically,” he concludes. data will run on a cloud-based facility of the National Strategic Hub, the state data infrastructure that ensures high standards of IT security and technological autonomy. Operators respond to incoming calls by handling them directly from computers, following a physician-defined protocol through an application model that we have studied and refined from what has already been done in Germany. The moment the staff following the calls identifies a serious or emergency situation, they can transfer the request directly to 118, passing to their colleagues all the information gathered earlier, speeding up patient care. Each incoming call, even from a cell phone, has a cell associated with it so that it can be sorted by specific ULSS “.
C.I.D. s.r.l. Società a Socio Unico – Casa editrice del settimanale Gente Veneta – CF e PI 02341300271 – REA: VE – 211669 – Capitale Sociale 31.000 euro i.v. – Dorsoduro,1 – 30123 Venezia
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