Attention to eHealth rises in the Netherlands

The Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa) wants to contribute to stimulating the right care in the right place by making it possible to deploy e-health applications more broadly. In 2019 NZa will examine the possibilities for declaring e-health with the focus on district nursing and long-term care.

E-health can make an essential contribution to the use of the right care in the right place. Many e-health applications already exist in healthcare, but often on a small scale. In the letter “Right Care in the Right Place” to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, the NZa explains which actions they will launch in 2019. In 2020, these actions must provide funding for e-health.

Among the plans of NZa is to have what can and cannot be reimbursed defined less tightly, so that new e-health technologies could be implemented earlier. For health insurers and health care providers it could provide more clarity in the contracting if new, clearly formulated performance descriptions are produced. NZa also wants to align the tariffs for certain e-health applications with those of ordinary healthcare products.

See full details in Dutch here.

Furthermore, a large part of the e-health projects is in the pilot phase. As innovation often has more impact on the healthcare organization than is estimated, Zorg voor Innoveren (Care for Innovation) developed a step-by-step plan for a systematic approach for e-health introduction. Care for Innovation innoveren is an initiative of four government agencies: Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport, ZonMw (Dutch organization for health research and innovation in healthcare), the National Health Care Institute and Dutch Healthcare Authority (NZa).

The roadmap contains many practical examples, points of interest and tips. The document starts with the 'vision and strategy' component and then works in steps towards the end result: from planning to development, execution, and evaluation and finally upscaling. The whole process is explained in comprehensible language and with useful source references. Each chapter contains a list of audit questions, which serves as a handy checklist for the relevant part of the implementation. The step-by-step plan for e-health implementation plan, published by Care for Innovation, is avaliable here. 

See full details in Dutch here.

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