Tuesday, November 25, 2025
How do you bridge the gap between developing healthcare innovations and their actual use in practice? The municipality of The Hague is combining both in a single building: a Healthcare Innovation Hub in the heart of a residential and shopping area.
The Municipality of The Hague's ‘Technologie voor Thuis’ ('Technology for Home') program will soon open its Healthcare Innovation Hub (Zorginnovatiehub) in the Leyweg shopping center, in the heart of the Morgenstond neighborhood. Here, residents can try out and borrow smart devices for free, and healthcare technology innovations are developed, tested, and deployed. By housing the companies developing these innovations in the same building, a direct relationship is created between developers and users.
We spoke with Charlotte Krom, initiator of the Healthcare Innovation Hub and program manager of Technology for the Home, about this unique initiative. "If it stays within the scientific realm, nothing will happen. Ultimately, you need practical experience to truly achieve anything."
This interview is the sixth in a series with practical partners of the transdisciplinary Medical Delta programs and living labs.
Can you briefly tell us about your involvement with Medical Delta?
"Through the Medical Delta program and living lab 'Assistive Technology at Home,' we have frequent contact with Medical Delta about innovation projects and healthcare issues in our region. We submit questions or contribute ideas for solutions. And we have a key joint partner at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. We also see that many of the innovation partners in our network are using the ZorgTech vouchers, and Medical Delta is one of ZorgTech's program partners."
A healthcare innovation hub in the heart of a residential and shopping center in The Hague: why that choice?
“We see that many healthcare innovations don't always find their way into practice, or don't properly meet practical needs. As a municipality, we're a bit concerned about this: how do we get everyone on board with the transition to more digital care? How can we continue to help people who might find it difficult, and how do we ensure that healthcare innovations are actually used in people's homes?
It's important to bring together the development of healthcare innovations and their implementation, and to do this where people need care. People will soon be able to easily walk in and out of the Healthcare Innovation Hub. Innovative companies can establish themselves here and ask their target group for direct feedback. Is the innovation working well? Is the application understandable? They'll receive this feedback directly, firsthand. This allows them to tailor and improve their innovations at an early stage.”
How do you support healthcare innovation companies?
"We've noticed that, especially in the early stages, many companies struggle to get input from end users and validate their ideas with healthcare providers and professionals. They're often unaware of the support funding available for startups and scale-ups. We help them get started. For example, we hold weekly consultation hours and meetings for innovative start-ups in healthcare.
The discussions then focus on the financing landscape, how the social sector works. How to attract investors, find a launch customer... those kinds of questions. As a start-up, you have to consider the development of your healthcare innovation, but also everything surrounding it."
How do these companies gather practical feedback?
"We have a live-in experience center where seniors share their opinions on innovations. It's a great resource. It's also a lot of fun, because these seniors are wonderfully forthcoming, giving their honest feedback in true Hague style.
These seniors are our ambassadors. Some have been participating in our program for ten years and are now well into their nineties. Perhaps being an ambassador even has a positive impact on life expectancy, haha.
We're increasingly expanding our group of ambassadors to include informal caregivers, people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, or mental health vulnerabilities, and migrants. We're also setting up a kind of sounding board with professionals, from general practitioners to social workers and senior consultants. They provide advice on the development of the Healthcare Innovation Hub as well as input on the healthcare innovations themselves. With our ambassadors and this panel, we hope to help validate healthcare innovations.
Why did the municipality of The Hague take on this role?
"For a long time, healthcare innovations were primarily confined to hospitals and healthcare institutions. However, about ten years ago, we saw that people were living at home longer and longer. There have been countless innovations in medical care, but the care and support covered by the Social Support Act (Wmo), in people's homes, has lagged behind. And so, as the funder of the Social Support Act, we felt we had to take an active role in this. We've since started facilitating this more and more. We ensure that the network knows each other. Think of hospitals, healthcare institutions, knowledge institutions, and businesses.
You should not burden people with four different remote visual care applications
The question is: how do we keep our own municipal healthcare system future-proof, and how do we ensure that everyone can participate? By actively engaging in this, you increase the likelihood of innovation happening in a way that we, as a municipality, consider important for our residents.
But coordination is also important, and that's where we have a role to play. You shouldn't burden people with four different remote visual care applications, because then they'll call their general practitioner when they no longer know how it works. Wonderful healthcare innovations are being developed, but if you give older people all sorts of devices and products from their general practitioner, daycare, or hospital and don't coordinate them, it becomes a real nightmare for them. We need to connect with each other in this regard as well."
Does this also apply within the municipality? How do policy areas collaborate?
“The municipality's Technology for Home program falls within three domains: healthcare, economy, and employment. It's an integrated program under the responsibility of three aldermen and three directors.
For example: regarding the use of healthcare innovations by the elderly, we're exploring how we can employ people distanced from the labor market as healthcare technology support staff, thereby relieving some of the pressure on healthcare professionals themselves. Another example: if a company can't properly test a promising healthcare innovation, we can mediate between them and a healthcare organization and end users.
The overlap between the domains of healthcare, economy, and employment allows us to accelerate the development and implementation of healthcare innovations. This, in turn, has positive effects on access to healthcare, the economy, and the labor market.”
How do you reach the social and informal domain, such as informal caregivers?
"It's quite complicated: implementing an innovation in a nursing home is much easier. The structure is in place, and there are staff available to support it. If you bring an innovation to people's homes, you're partially handing over the use and control, because people will really have to take action themselves. They often don't have any formal support beyond that.
Through (online) awareness campaigns, an inspiration guide, and a traveling exhibition, we show people what's possible, for example in general practitioner waiting rooms and health centers. But also through informal care organizations. At lending points, we make care innovations easily accessible and ask people to simply try them out for three months. And we provide information to professionals in the community."
How do you prevent innovation processes from creating extra work for healthcare professionals?
“Innovation can sometimes save work, and sometimes it creates extra work. We then explore other options. For example, by deploying people who are disadvantaged in the labor market to support the use of these innovations, thereby saving work for healthcare professionals.
Even more than before, we are critical in the preliminary phase: why are we starting something, what are the intermediate steps, and what are we building towards? This requires more effort, but it allows us to take a more targeted approach.
We are currently exploring home-based signaling. We are first conducting a comparative study. After this selection, we will start with small pilot projects and gradually expand these with the right parties across the entire healthcare chain. Then these pilot projects will truly work towards transition, instead of just trial and error. We will continually develop these projects based on the feedback received.
These are multi-year projects: only after two or three years will you know which innovations are the best fit, what the preconditions are for successful implementation, and whether you can scale up.
Of course, an innovation may not be a good fit or viable after all, which can also be an outcome. This way, you arrive at a much more realistic implementation process."
How do you help make the transition from science to practical application?
“What we're trying to do is really broaden the scope. If it stays within the scientific realm, nothing will happen. Ultimately, you need practical experience to truly achieve anything. If, for example, you only talk to a hospital to develop a healthcare innovation, you won't succeed. Often, you also have to involve the Nursing, Care, and Home Care (VVT) sector, the Social Support Act (Wmo) comes into play, or a housing association is a key player. Funding is also important, of course.
What you really want, is collaboration beyond domains
There's good collaboration: hospitals know how to connect, VVT organizations work well together. But what you really want, is collaboration beyond domains as well. Many types of organizations need to connect, and we still have work to do in that area.
And then there are the users themselves, and informal caregivers, and healthcare providers. Can everyone work with a specific solution? Ultimately, we want to bring together all types of stakeholders in every phase of a healthcare innovation. And that the further development is based on a joint agenda that sets out the health priorities for the Hague region for the coming years.”
Do you have an example where this complexity is reflected?
"You actually see this complexity in almost everything we do, including something as practical as lending points for healthcare applications. There's a healthcare component, funding is important, but also: which people do you deploy to explain the use? How does it fit into existing care pathways? How do we deal with non-Dutch-speaking people and inclusion? How do you integrate innovations with the existing range of healthcare resources and prevent people from receiving separate support for everything?
From our Healthcare Innovation Hub, we approach innovation projects in all their complexity
In such matters, there is a huge variety of parties and interests that converge; it goes far beyond simply running a pilot project and seeing what happens. That's why we focus on all kinds of stakeholders and try to bring them together. It's crucial that they meet regularly and consistently. From our Healthcare Innovation Hub, we approach innovation projects in all their complexity.
The companies that come here are confronted with the end user at an early stage. At the same time, we also visit general practitioners, Wmo case managers, and healthcare providers to demonstrate our work and seek collaboration. And to identify common healthcare practice questions.
With the Healthcare Innovation Hub in Morgenstond, we're in a special location, in the heart of a highly diverse residential and shopping district. A relatively large number of people with a low socio-economic status or who don't speak the language well live here. As a researcher, you can encounter hard-to-reach groups here. If you can successfully implement your research or innovation project here, you know it's suitable for a broad group.
Here, you come into contact with the real world."
Also read: Interview about collaboration between Zorginnovatiehub and Medical Delta | Medical Delta
Photo's: Guido Benschop
