Commissioned by the province of Overijssel and together with the lectureship ICT innovations in Care of Hogeschool Windesheim, Health Valley conducted a study into the applications of digitisation in care and its acceleration by corona. What have we learned from corona and what can we retain from it after corona? These questions were put to innovation managers in hospitals, care for the elderly, care for the disabled and home care. The lessons learned are compiled on this website.
Not only did healthcare organisations accelerate the introduction of eHealth during the pandemic; the acceptance and adaptation by users also increased because digital solutions proved to be very useful. The project ‘Learning from Corona’ mapped out the lessons learned and how they can be used to make sustainable use of eHealth applications after the pandemic. After all, at some point citizens – patients and clients – will start asking ‘can it be done digitally’?
Lessons learned bundled together
Jolanda van Til, lecturer-researcher at Windesheim: “When the province also seemed interested in the question, we turned it into a project and quickly got to work. We interviewed fourteen innovation managers, did a lot of desk research and finally held two group sessions; meetings with the interviewees to explore the themes and findings in greater depth.” Meanwhile, the most important results of the research, clustered around eight themes, are on the website www.innovatiemanagerindezorg.nl.
Corine Böhmers, innovation manager at Health Valley and also involved in the study: “On this website, innovation managers find all kinds of starting points for implementing and speeding up digital solutions. A wealth of information and an incentive to share knowledge.
There is already a lot; make use of it
And that is perhaps the most important result of the study: sharing knowledge, Corine says: “You don’t have to invent the wheel yourself. There are already many step-by-step plans and programmes. You can find them on the website. Look carefully at what is already there and use it to your advantage. Corona has given video-calling an enormous boost. We will probably see some reversal of this later, but hybrid working is here to stay. Look at your neighbours and see how they organise things, and take over what you can use.
Jolanda adds: “During the research and in the group discussions, we already saw a kind of fellow sufferer contact develop. That is very important. The role of innovation manager can be very lonely. Know that exactly the same developments are being worked on elsewhere and learn from each other. The website now offers a wonderful platform for that.”
