Professor Maaike Kleinsmann joins board of the National eHealth Living Lab

Prof. Dr. Maaike Kleinsmann will become the fifth board member of the National eHealth Living Lab (NeLL), the international knowledge network in the field of eHealth. As Professor of Design for Digital Transformation at TU Delft, she will focus on design and devices at NeLL. "We are very proud of Maaike's appointment to the NeLL Board. She is an enrichment of the existing team and actually deepens and broadens our knowledge network," says Niels Chavannes, founder of NeLL.

Since March 2018, the NeLL team has been committed to making eHealth a fully integrated part of healthcare as we know it. In order to develop more sustainable care models: person-centered and a combination of physical care and care at a distance, or 'blending'. "In the year 2020, eHealth is still too much seen as a separate approach that needs to be stuck on top of or behind existing care processes", says Chavannes.

Kleinsmann shares this vision: "We can only make care future-proof, i.e.: keep it accessible and affordable and at the same time organise it pleasantly and efficiently for everyone, if we also use digital care tools where desirable and useful". NeLL sees eHealth as a means and not as an end in itself, says Kleinsmann: "Digital care can be helpful as it can be used anywhere, anytime. eHealth can give chronic patients in particular a lot of freedom. One condition, however, is that it also fits into his or her life. We should only develop technology that solves an actual problem and we should design it in such a way that the user (patient, caregiver and/or care professional) is happy to use such a tool and therefore continues to use it".

In order to give substance to this, NeLL will - even more than at present - pay attention to the journey of end users, co-creation with end users and design driven research. With her experience, Prof. Kleinsmann will actively implement this in cooperation with the NeLL Team and Network. In addition to apps and web-platforms, Kleinsmann will also use her expertise in the field of 'devices'. "This really enriches the knowledge available within the NeLL Team. Very relevant when you consider that almost all devices have a link to a digital platform now", says Chavannes.

Maaike Kleinsmann will officially join the NeLL Board on 1 December 2020.