Paul de Kort, Philadelphia: 'Advancing digital care together'

Many healthcare organizations are running into the same problems. They are all looking for digital solutions. Paul de Kort, director of ICT Philadelphia, calls on them to work together more. "Let's see how we can use each other's knowledge to successfully deploy digital care," he says.

Scale makes a difference. With more than 600 locations, the Philadelphia Care Foundation is one of the largest organizations in the Netherlands in the field of care and support for people with intellectual disabilities. Some 8,000 people work to care for its 11,000 clients and residents. The ICT department alone has 100 of its own employees.

That scale has impact, says director of ICT Paul de Kort. "What we do is nothing special, because we run into the same problems as most other healthcare organizations in the Netherlands. We have to do the same work with less money and fewer people. That is why we are fully committed to providing as much care as possible with digital tools. We're pretty far along with that. When you're as big as we are, you have more capacity and people to innovate in e-health."

Accelerating together

Because the problems facing healthcare organizations are so similar, De Kort advocates seeking cooperation above all else. "Why should each healthcare organization invent the wheel itself if we can accelerate together? Let's see how we can make use of each other's knowledge. That is why I ask all healthcare organizations not to develop their own system. Make use of what we already have. For that I need colleagues and companies, but also market players who can make it easier to get links between systems done."

Information security and privacy requirements

Such cooperation is not getting off the ground enough so far, De Kort believes. After all, everyone is dealing with transformations within their own organizations that require a lot of time and energy. Information security and privacy requirements also do not make collaboration easy. "That is not conducive to collaboration, to spreading data and to discovering AI applications. We see many opportunities, but we are very careful with our residents' data."

Image calling

Making it easier to link the various electronic client files (ECDs) would already be very helpful, De Kort believes. From Philadelphia, for example, DigiContact was developed, an application to assist clients with image calls and e-mail. "That is a solution that is also very applicable to others. We do run into challenges in practice in the area of interfacing with other ECDs. I really need the suppliers to solve this properly."

Nurse triage

According to De Kort, if cooperation between healthcare institutions and IT suppliers can solve these kinds of problems, it will save a lot of money and "hassle. "In the Zwolle-Drenthe region, with the help of IZA funds, we are looking at how to do nursing triage for the entire sector via DigiContact. Nurses interact remotely with supervisors of residents. "It turns out that in more than 85 percent of the cases the nurse can give advice remotely, which ultimately saves someone from having to go to the doctor."

Total service online

De Kort has been with the Philadelphia Care Foundation for more than two years. Prior to that, he has primarily guided other organizations as an advisor and consultant. "Here I'm going to do it myself, that's what makes it fun for me. The core of our digital strategy 2025-2030 is that in five years we will be able to offer our total services online as a partner of people with intellectual disabilities."

The rapid development of all kinds of digital tools provides ample opportunities for this. "We are now developing the tools that will allow us to be 100 percent online partners in a few years. Thanks to AI, we can do a lot to support people without still being constantly physically present."

Social robots and chatbots

This can be done in a variety of ways. In addition to DigiContact, these could be social robots and chatbots, or a screen with an AI animation that can conduct conversations based on ECD information. "We are already testing all that, it's just a matter of scaling it up. We need the links between the different systems. That's where the biggest obstacles are right now. And to make it widely and robustly practical in a few years, we need suppliers, consultancies and partners."

Paul de Kort, director ICT and digital transformation Philadelphia Care Foundation, was keynote at Care & ict 2025