One-stop shop for digital healthcare innovations needed

From development and initial experiments with digital healthcare innovations to practical application: where and to whom should you turn as a developer or healthcare provider for advice and help?

On numerous fronts, healthcare professionals and entrepreneurs are working on digital healthcare innovations. These are the future solutions to the growing shortage of hands at the bedside. According to consulting firm McKinsey, the digital healthcare revolution could even save 22 billion. But on the sometimes long road to practical application, developers run into laws and practical objections. In a packed theater tent, representatives of Zorginstituut Nederland, the NZa and Zorgverzekeraars Nederland discuss obstacles, rules and pay titles.

On one thing Robin Toorneman, ZiN, Dennis Japink, ZN, and Anthony Heil, NZa, agree wholeheartedly: the digital healthcare transformation is necessary, the mantra "digital if you can" they all embrace. But what each person's role then is in that necessary transformation varies.

Digitization and hybridization

Among health insurers, digitalization and hybridization of care is increasingly a consideration in annual procurement rounds, but parties that are "digital first" are not really given priority yet. "We are not that far yet," says Japink.

The NZa gets other questions when it comes to digital healthcare innovations, because what pay title can be assigned to them and why does it take so long? "It is sometimes possible to award an 'experimental pay title' within a few months," Heil says, "if an innovation has a certain scale and if health insurers are behind it."

Basic Package

The Health Care Institute has a guide that describes how health care providers, health insurers and developers can assess whether digital care belongs in the basic package. The NZa has its own 'guide to financing digital care', which describes the options for financing digital care. This can sometimes be complicated, for example in the case of so-called "asynchronous digital care," or digital self-care.

A striking difference from Germany, Toorneman says. "It is kind of special that for once Germany is ahead of us in digitization of care, because there doctors can already write a 'prescription' for digital treatments or an app."

ZN is experimenting in that area, Japink adds. "Together with a number of other parties, such as the LHV and patient federations, we have taken the initiative to make referable apps for digital self-care. This year is mainly for learning, in 2026 we want to make three apps referable."

Transformation Agenda

Japink also mentions the Digizo platform from ZN: "Before 2022, health insurers were mainly working on digital transformation from within themselves. But you can't manage such a transformation alone." Starting in 2023, fourteen different parties found each other in Digizo. "Together we have drawn up a transformation agenda of relevant processes that we are going to digitize."

Central point of contact

Among all these different sources, Toorneman ultimately points in particular to the website zorgvoorinnoveren.nl. According to him, that is the one-stop shop and central point of contact for all questions of care innovators. "We are in the midst of digital transformation. The most important thing is that care remains accessible; that urgency remains great."