The letter of intent on improving e-Health for long-term care for the elderly has been signed by the director Lia de Jongh and geriatric specialist Wilco Achterberg van Topaz in Niels Chavannes in Esther Talboom van NeLL. Realizing a hub eHealth for long-term and post-acute elderly care fits seamlessly with the activities of NeLL, which explicitly focuses on people who have less insight into their own health.
Low health skills
For NeLL, inclusion is an essential condition for the proper use of eHealth solutions. In other words: the solutions must match the capabilities of all end users who are involved in all phases of the development process. In geriatrics, extra attention is needed anyway. prof. Niels Chavannes, one of the signatories of the letter of intent, says: “Since the foundation of NeLL, we have targeted people with low health literacy. That is by far the biggest impact on our care and our healthcare costs. Intervention using personalized eHealth applications can therefore help above average here.”
Effective e-Health elderly care
NeLL works closely with healthcare organizations, universities, healthcare consumers, researchers and other parties in developing, improving and scaling up e-Health. The knowledge platform focuses on evaluation, implementation and co-creation of effective eHealth so that eHealth becomes a fully integrated part of health and care. According to NeLL’s vision, healthcare professionals will have fully implemented eHealth in their practice in the near future. In addition, eHealth, like interventions and medication, is included in the guidelines for healthcare professionals.
Topaz and Nell work together
The knowledge platform is now joining forces with Topaz, a care organization with 7 nursing homes, 1 residential care center and 1 rehabilitation location in the Leiden and Bollenstreek region. Topaz has built up excellent expertise in the care of people with dementia and people with Huntington’s disease and geriatric rehabilitation. With the development and implementation of validated eHealth, Topaz contributes to person-oriented and sustainable care.
eHealth hybrid organized
The care and treatment is organized in a hybrid way at Topaz, with the use of eHealth. It is clear that NeLL and Topaz together have the competencies to set up the intended hub for sustainable eHealth in elderly care.
On the website of NeLL it is as follows: ‘A crucial part of the collaboration is to immediately bring about the changes that we achieve with joint efforts as sustainably as possible. Important pillars here are both digital and social innovation. A first objective is to develop a roadmap for innovation. Within this roadmap, attention is paid to the health skills and digital skills of both client and healthcare worker, so that implementation and use in daily practice can run more smoothly.’
