Commissioned by the province of Overijssel and together with the lectureship ICT innovations in Care of Hogeschool Windesheim, Health Valley conducted a study into the applications of digitisation in care and its acceleration by corona. What have we learned from corona and what can we retain from it after corona? These questions were put to innovation managers in hospitals, care for the elderly, care for the disabled and home care. The lessons learned are compiled on the website: www.innovatiemanagerindezorg.nl.

Not only did healthcare organisations accelerate the introduction of eHealth during the pandemic; the acceptance and adaptation by users also increased because digital solutions proved to be very useful. The project ‘Learning from Corona’ mapped out the lessons learned and how they can be used to make sustainable use of eHealth applications after the pandemic. After all, at some point citizens – patients and clients – will start asking ‘can it be done digitally’?

Lessons learned bundled together
Jolanda van Til, lecturer-researcher at Windesheim: “When the province also seemed interested in the question, we turned it into a project and quickly got to work. We interviewed fourteen innovation managers, did a lot of desk research and finally held two group sessions; meetings with the interviewees to explore the themes and findings in greater depth.” Meanwhile, the most important results of the research, clustered around eight themes, are on the website www.innovatiemanagerindezorg.nl.

Corine Böhmers, innovation manager at Health Valley and also involved in the study: “On this website, innovation managers find all kinds of starting points for implementing and speeding up digital solutions. A wealth of information and an incentive to share knowledge.

There is already a lot; make use of it
And that is perhaps the most important result of the study: sharing knowledge, Corine says: “You don’t have to invent the wheel yourself. There are already many step-by-step plans and programmes. You can find them on the website. Look carefully at what is already there and use it to your advantage. Corona has given video-calling an enormous boost. We will probably see some reversal of this later, but hybrid working is here to stay. Look at your neighbours and see how they organise things, and take over what you can use.

Jolanda adds: “During the research and in the group discussions, we already saw a kind of fellow sufferer contact develop. That is very important. The role of innovation manager can be very lonely. Know that exactly the same developments are being worked on elsewhere and learn from each other. The website now offers a wonderful platform for that.”

This SMB meeting was about the role of keeping our healthcare system healthy, in all aspects.

Remco Hoogendijk of the Sint Maartenskliniek started the first presentation and talked about their MaaS project and the online environment that has been created for patients to follow and plan their own care and treatments. Remco expects that care will become increasingly virtual, including appointments.

Angelique Moonen of VIGO Group focused on the ‘Wicked problems in healthcare’; Long waiting lists, long waits for surgery and the shortage of professionals. At the same time, patients only expect more from professionals. In order to actually implement digital innovations, things need to change! Vigo Group is happy to start a change and has created a new Platform Ecosystem, where people work on their mental health and mental resilience themselves and can get a better match with the professionals.

E-Health specialist Ruben de Neef from Luscii talked about unlocking the power of patients. With Florence Nightingale as an inspiration to approach the condition of a patient from a different point of view. Luscii can be a virtual member in your care team, an extra team member. Luscii notices things in the home of the patient and sees different things than the doctor in the hospital sees. There is already a large library in this tool with 40 pathways to follow, developed by doctors and nurses for the patient. And the possibilities are endless for further digital development in the future.

Gert-Jan de Brok, co-founder of InMotion VR is very fond of games and technology. So their motto is: Let’s play to heal. They use Corpus VR for the rehabilitation of a patient. As many people already use wearables with sensors, they can reach a large audience and it’s very cost & time efficient. Gamification is fun, which is why it works better than traditional methods of physiotherapy.

Finally, we were updated on the Digital Health Hub by Tom van de Belt and Floor van de Watering. Tom started the presentation with a digital health ecosystem analysis of our region. Floor van de Watering adds: Healthcare professionals encounter problems that they do not communicate efficiently to innovative organisations. And on the other hand companies develop innovations that the healthcare sector does not need or see as a problem. And for some problems the solution might already be available in a completely different market (e.g. planning tools for distribution).

The digital health Hub will fill this gap and bring the right parties together, so that relevant innovations can be made and the pressure on healthcare can be relieved with the help of digital innovations. It will be a great, but rewarding challenge for the future to work on this together!

We thank all the speakers for their interesting contributions to this SMB meeting about digital health!