If health care professionals are on one side, and patients and consumers are on the other, Slimmer Leven 2020 is somewhere in between. The co-operation looks forward to Dutch Technology Week, where they start the conversation with both parties in order to keep on innovating healthcare.
E52 publishes a series of articles in preparation for the Dutch Technology Week (23-29 May). This is the third part. Here the earlier parts.
Slimmer Leven 2020 is on quest for smarter healthcare, whether its through technological innovation or by igniting collaborations. An example of this is the SkinVision app. Upon joining the Slimmer Leven network they had around 100 users, by now the number of users is somewhere around 1000. Helping to create Centrale 24, where the IT-departments of different health care organisations are brought together, is another example.
Accepting new technology in healthcare is a must, not just a luxury, if we want to maintain the availabillity and quality of our healhtcare.
Slimmer Leven wants to use Dutch Technology Week (23th to 28th of May) to ignite a conversation with professonials as well ass consumers and patients. This could happen at the network event, where health care is discussed on an andministrative level, with talks about ecosystems and innovation hotspot. But also at the eHealth-informationpoints, scattered throughout the city. where consumers and designers meet to talk about new technology.
Lastig innovatieterrein
“Both are important to us”, says Slimmer Leven-CEO Peter Portheine. “Although expierence taught us to carefully choose the words we use. There’s just no use in speaking in terms such as the Double-Helix Transformer Programme Health Ecosystem, jargon the average Brabander wouldn’t understand.”
Health care seems to be a tricky sector to innovate. “Among other reasons, this is because one patient often deals with multiple organisations”, Portheine says. An example: a diabetic deals with a general practicioner, a nurse that visits him/her at home and a specialist in the hospital.
“That situation could be slimmed down if it would be organized in a smarter way”, Portheine says. This however, could lead to a loss of income for any of the parties involved. “If treatment that usually would be done in a hospital could be integrated with the practice of the General Practicioner, this could lead to a loss of income fo the hospital, this probably won’t motivate them to help us making progress in innovating the branch.”
Importance
Consumers also seem a bit reluctant to the idea of innovating healthcare. Data that’s left behind when using medical apps is something they are worried about. “Most people don’t know this, but they already leave a lot of data when using standard running apps for example. I always say: ‘For every free app you use, there’s about 70 parties that benefit from it.’ However, the moment an app is made by a government or it has anything to do with healthcare, people freak out. We can’t be careful enough in explaining that their data is safe.”
Portheine: “Because innovating healthcare is important. There’s a fast increase of need in healthcare and the cost that come with it. Therefore, accepting new technology in healthcare is a must, not just a luxury, if we want to maintain the availabillity and quality of our healhtcare. Dutch Design Week gives us a change at getting across that message.”
Read more about Dutch Technology Week.
