E-Health at ZGT

Cardiologist Gerard Linssen is part of a dedicated team managing the pilot. “ZGT was approached by Thales Netherlands to make the app possible”, he explains. “Together we want to make distant care easier. Patients are given a scale, a blood pressure monitor and a tablet for at home. With these appliances, they measure and register their weight, blood pressure and pulse on a daily base. This is extremely handy to check the development of the disease clearly and objectively, at home. Patients can also send an extra message when they have additional complaints. The cardiac nursing staff are then signaled through a secured website in ZGT. The medical team is then able to advise the patient about the actions to be taken. For example, changing medicine dosage.''

De purpose of the app is to give the patient more control about the care that he or she needs. “Because you are involved with it every day, you are really given an overview of the complaints that you have. It is really important that we are able to signal issues on time, especially by looking at trends. We can never highlight it often enough: it is better to prevent a disease than to cure it”, Linssen explains. “As a team, we are given more insight into the disease and the treatment. When we encounter remarkable results we want to be able to intervene in time. If we can recognize a disruption in time, hospitalization can even be prevented. Eventually, we hope that patients have to go to the hospital for checks less often. The future will tell."

Not just within ZGT people are cooperating to make this app possible. “We are dependent on a lot of factors to be able to execute this project in a good and safe way. It involves things such as its ease of use, the secure storage of information and the most important: a clear explanation to the patient. We can’t do that alone, and luckily we don’t have to”, says Linssen. “Vodafone is taking care of the network, the University of Twente is collecting all data for research and conducts the interviews with patients and the medical team about their experiences. And health care insurance provider Menzis is supporting the project financially. Together we see this project as an investment in the future. It is a partnership between some very diverse parties to make an important contribution to our health care system. That is a wonderful development.”

Read more here about Twente Branding partner ZGT!