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Bianca Rouwenhorst is the Director of Information Policy and Chief Information Officer at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS). From this position, she leads the digital transfor mation of the Dutch healthcare sector. She is a fervent advocate of e-health and sees tech nology as the way to improve healthcare processes. She does this by focusing on both technological progress and human interaction. Rouwenhorst often speaks at conferences, where she encourages parties in healthcare to work together and think beyond their interests.

ren and future generations. This is a huge task for everyone, not just for me: patients, professionals, carers, policymakers, researchers, innovators, governments, and financiers. We all have our part to play, and I count on all of them to take responsibility.” Collaborating in Europe “It will be impossible to transition without colla borating. If we all continue to work in our own way, we will never be able to share data across borders. It limits the future-proof healthcare for our citizens who work, travel, and live all over the world. In today’s world, we need to develop solutions and innovations that are internationally exchangeable and applicable. Research can also be provided with more data from more patients from more countries, so that more personalised treatments can be found for patients in Europe and abroad. I always challenge countries at conferences to openly share good ideas with each other and maybe even steal from each other.”

©Michiel Ton

the occupational therapist, the physiotherapist, and so on and so forth. About 15 people stood on stage to represent the healthcare providers she deals with on a daily basis. Each of them has a small part of her son’s medical information, and none of them has the whole picture with all the necessary data. The mother has to log in to as many patient systems as there are healthcare providers tre ating her son. And she has to keep track of all that data and combine it herself to get the whole picture. She has to communicate with the health care providers to prevent them from prescribing counterproductive treatments and medications. Such practical examples show the impor tance of reorganising our healthcare system. This perfectly illustrates why I have a mission to create future-proof healthcare. Healthcare for everyone, including our children and grandchild

Today, one in seven people work in healthcare. If we do nothing, this will have to be one in four people by 2040. It will be an unprecedented crisis, with worse health outcomes as a result.” With these challenges in mind, how do we shift from disease care to healthcare, how do we prevent people from getting sick, how do we keep healthcare accessible to those who need it, how do we use science to get better treatments faster, and how do we use technology and data to innovate and provide care to everyone?” A huge task “At a conference earlier this year, I heard a mother, Laura, talking about caring for her son with epilepsy. She showed us in a simple sys tem how many care providers are involved in caring for her child: the GP, the community nurse, the pharmacist, the hospital, the neurologist,

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