The Eindhoven Medtech Innovation Center (e/MTIC) aims to accelerate medical innovations and technical innovation in healthcare. For example, by sharing more relevant data in a secure way. PhD students, experts and scientists from the Catharine Hospital, Eindhoven University of Technology, Máxima MC, Philips and the Kempenhaege epilepsy and sleep center can use this to their innovative advantage. Last Friday they met in conference in the Muziekgebouw Eindhoven.
Such a conference is an excellent opportunity to learn from mistakes and successes when it comes to eHealth, in other words digital healthcare. That it is serious proves that the government has invested 69 million in the National Growth Fund to set up a national infrastructure for healthcare data.
“We had to wait eighteen years for that,” Bas Bloem, the always passionate professor of neurology at Radboud University in Nijmegen, told the audience. Bloem is an expert when it comes to Parkinson’s, a chronic and progressive motion sickness.
Bas Bloem, together with Dr Marten Munneke, founded the internationally acclaimed ParkinsonNet in 2004 to improve quality of life and treatment. It is now a popular export product. Collecting relevant digital data about the debilitating disease and sharing it with scientists, researchers and practitioners is of paramount importance.
New studies into medicine against Parkinson’s
Several international Parkinson’s studies are starting in Nijmegen.
Ten million diseases
“There is no such thing as Parkinson’s disease. There are as many diseases as there are people with Parkinson’s,” says Bloem. That is why, as a neurologist, he increasingly recognized the importance of customization. Because every person affected struggles with his own version of the disease. In Eindhoven, the neurologist mainly tried to show where things often go wrong in healthcare: patients behave differently in a hospital than at home. In a well-lit corridor on a wear-resistant tarpaulin in a hospital, a Parkinson’s patient walks differently than when he has to find his way to the toilet at home, slaloming on a poorly lit landing between the cupboard and the secretary’s desk.
“They even take extra medication to impress me. What I’m really interested in are the problems at home that remain largely invisible when they come to me in the hospital. Actually, the hospital is the wrong place to receive these people. Once they see a doctor, they tell a different story.”
It made Bloem think. How do you get data from behind the front door? His finding: combine social networks with eHealth. Although he immediately adds a disclaimer: use eHealth as a means, not as an end.
Network
ParkinsonNet turned out to be an excellent opportunity to ask questions about the needs and requirements of patients. “We were able to ask patients about their top priority. For example, it came out: give me a place where I can go 24/7 for all my problems that can be solved immediately. Or that they can at least tell me where to go. For many patients, healthcare is a jungle. They can really get lost in it and have no idea where to go.”
The efficiency gain was not long in coming. Subsequently, cooperation was sought. “The idea was that the patient does not come to Radboud, but that Radboud shares knowledge with local hospitals to enable local teams to function better.”
Technical innovations
eHealth only works if you link it to the passionate professional, says Bloem. That will not change with technological innovations. If only enough reliable information is available, patients can also work on their own and do not have to wait for the medical system.
“People are more than their illness, you have to make contact with the medical profession as small as possible so that you can be wife, husband, girlfriend, mother and colleague. If you measure yourself every day, you are a full-time patient.”
Ten innovations for healthcare
Of the 182 hours a year that an average person waits in the Netherlands, many hours are spent in the waiting room of a general practitioner or specialist.
Smartwatch
A nice tool for this is a smartwatch that collects data about a patient almost 24/7 without the intervention of a doctor. Bloem: “We base our findings on the results we see in the hospital, but you see that these are snapshots that do not correspond to the data we receive via the watch. Through a dashboard, users can easily see if things are going well (green light) or if they should call the portal (yellow light) where they will be immediately referred or if they need to take action as soon as possible. That’s how it should be. Then the question is: will digital technology sideline the doctor? I do not think so.”
ParkinsonNet now operates nationally and more than 3,700 professionals have been trained; from physios to nurses. There is a kind of Facebook through which different networks connect and function better. By now, every Parkinson’s patient in the Netherlands can easily see via his zip code where which help is very close by. They get a roadmap and can see which doctors are involved, what they look like, what they have done, how they work and how much experience they have.
The latest study, still very fresh according to Bloem, shows that in addition to a national network, there are also seventy regional networks. It is being investigated how well these networks are attuned to each other. According to Bas Bloem, a lot can be gained there. “Some hospitals are located on an island, others think in a much more multi-disciplined way. Ultimately, it comes down to the patient’s personal wishes. That requires precision management.”
Björk
He comes up with two examples that were retrieved through digital research. A man who walks better to the beats of Björk and a companion who moves to the emotional music from the opera Orpheus and Eurydice. The question of an 87-year-old patient whether he should do exercises is difficult for a specialist to answer, according to Bloem. But if you link the patient’s question and the specialist’s knowledge to large amounts of data, doctors can draw better conclusions. According to Professor Bas Bloem, there is great significance and progress for eHealth.