Flagship

Sustainability of healthcare is under pressure because of staff shortages, financial limitations, and societal expectations. Technological innovations could offer solutions, but many innovations in healthcare are characterized by non-adoption or by failed attempts to scale up, spread distantly, or sustain the innovation long term at the organization or system level. Embracing the possibilities of digital health technologies requires rethinking of the processes in the traditional consultation room. This Flagship takes up the challenge of designing the Consultation Room of the future in- and outside the hospital through building on existing initiatives (level 1), connecting, comparing, and integrating what is required for these initiatives to become embedded sustainably in the broader healthcare system (level 2) and by extending our network while facilitating learning and identifying the most promising solutions (level 3).

Within this Flagship 7 PhDs, a Post-Doc and researchers from Erasmus Medical Center, Erasmus University Rotterdam and TU Delft contribute to the aim to shape the (conditions for the) continuity of care from hospital to home through digital technologies, in which: 1) digital technologies for various conditions are integrated via co-design in care pathways; 2) the embedding of these technologies is addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective; (3) the impact of the digital technologies is continuously monitored through formative evaluation developed for different types of outcome measures and soft impacts. One of the goals is to become a Centre of Expertise on digital health by identifying the most promising approaches to structurally embed such technologies in care networks and facilitate inter-organizational learning. This will facilitate a sustainable, interdisciplinary research group with the ability to provide solutions for current healthcare issues and to proactively facilitate future changes in healthcare.