News item | 06-04-2023 | 15:08
Today, Minister Ernst Kuipers of Health, Welfare and Sport presented the National Vision on the health information system to the House of Representatives. The increasing pressure on healthcare requires a new vision on digitization and information provision. This is necessary to continue to provide high-quality, accessible and affordable care, now and in the future. The starting point is that the necessary medical data are available to citizens, patients, care providers, informal caregivers, researchers and policy officers to use for health, prevention and/or care.
Last year, the government made agreements with healthcare parties to ensure that healthcare is of high quality, accessible and affordable. These are laid down in the Integrated Care Agreement (IZA). One of the agreements from the IZA is to arrive at a national vision and strategy on digitization and information provision. Ultimately, this vision should lead to:
- Citizens can participate in decisions about care that is appropriate for them and have all the data available to do so;
- With the right data, healthcare providers can provide better and safe care with more options to promote health;
- Researchers and policymakers can use the available data to increase knowledge and provide well-founded and effective management.
Availability of medical data
Having access to the correct medical information is crucial for providing good care. That is not possible now. This has to do with the way in which medical data is recorded. A patient often has several care providers, each of whom records the patient’s data in their own ICT system. These ICT systems are not linked to each other and do not use the same language. Medical data cannot therefore be exchanged. There are currently no agreements about making medical data available. This means that different healthcare providers always have to enter and retype the same data. This results in a large registration burden for care providers, but also leads to errors and associated health damage for the patient and sometimes even to death.
The new vision is based on the availability of medical data so that the right care can be provided. Data must be available, accessible and usable for the primary care process, prevention and secondary use. A patient’s necessary medical information must be available with safeguards for patient safety and privacy. Trust in each other and in the careful use of data is essential here.
Direction
The vision also states that citizens must be given more control over their own health so that they can participate in decisions about the desired treatment. This requires that they have access to their own medical data, for example via a personal health environment. This also fits in with the desired digitization of care: in person if possible, at home if possible and digital if possible. This is referred to as appropriate hybrid care in both the IZA and the vision.
Secondary use
In the vision, medical data can be used in a third way. Namely the so-called secondary use of data. This means that patient data will become anonymously available for research, monitoring, innovation and policy. This allows new treatment methods to be developed for chronic diseases, for example. Measures can also be used for health and prevention.
Strategy
To make the vision concrete, a proposed short-term strategy has been developed. This strategy is in line with the agreements in the IZA. The medium and long-term strategy will follow later this year. The minister is working on this further with people from the field.