What if patients did not always have to travel to the hospital for a check-up, but could instead monitor their health from home? Within the Convergence Health & Technology Flagship Consultation Room 2030, doctors, engineers, designers, economists and behavioral scientists are exploring how technology can help bring more care closer to home.

This is becoming increasingly important as healthcare systems face growing pressure from an ageing population and staff shortages. At the same time, many digital innovations still struggle to find their way into everyday clinical practice. Consultation Room 2030 therefore looks not only at new technologies, but also at what is needed to implement and scale them successfully.

The future of the consultation room is already taking shape. In PregnaDigit, women with high-risk pregnancies can monitor their blood pressure at home and record a fetal heart trace themselves. Patients with pulmonary fibrosis can also monitor their lung function from home. As long as the measurements give no reason for concern, patients do not need to come to the hospital for every check-up. These approaches have already saved hundreds of hours of hospital visits.

But moving care closer to home requires more than a well-functioning app or sensor. Not every patient can or wants to receive care digitally, while funding, regulation and the organization of healthcare also play an important role. That is why teams from Erasmus MC, TU Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam study not only the technology itself, but also usability, accessibility, costs and alternative funding models.
Step by step, Consultation Room 2030 is working towards a different way of organizing care: more monitoring and support at home where possible, and in-person care where needed.

What could the consultation room of 2030 look like, and what is needed to move more care closer to home?

Read the full article on the TU Delft website via this link.