Specialist medical care

How can we all help to achieve better, affordable care for all? We need sustainable innovations like e-health, good healthcare organisation, transfer of information and good collaboration to provide high-quality care at an acceptable cost. We are therefore investing in medical research and the practical application of results, exploring what works and what does not, and also what innovative healthcare interventions exist and the best way of determining the right care. We are working together to enhance and share knowledge for future-ready healthcare.

Are all the treatments currently provided actually effective, and cost-effective? When it comes to hospital care, it is not possible to give a scientifically-based answer in many cases. Healthcare evaluations can reveal whether a patient has benefited from a certain treatment, or what treatment is to be preferred. This not only means health benefits for patients, but also avoids unnecessary expenditure. ZonMw performs healthcare evaluations as part of its Efficiency Studies and Healthcare Evaluation and Appropriate Use Studies programmes.

We need insight into the outcomes of healthcare that are relevant to the patient, in order to offer the most appropriate care. We are therefore investing in research into outcome-based healthcare, with the goal of supporting joint decision-making, learning and improvement based on information about healthcare outcomes in daily practice.

Guidelines and healthcare standards help healthcare professionals, patients and their families choose the appropriate care option. We therefore encourage the development, implementation, evaluation and revision of guidelines and standards. We provide clear information about what knowledge from medical research can be incorporated into guidelines, in collaboration with the Federation of Medical Specialists.

Specialist medical care is becoming increasingly complex. This means that more attention must be given to patient safety. One way of doing this is to consider what works well in daily practice (the Safety-II principle), rather than looking only at what does not go well. We can all learn a lot from the variation in daily practice, and how healthcare professionals and teams adapt to changing circumstances every day. Read about how we do this on our Safety-II and Ergonomics Safety programme.