Happy Birthday, HI-NL!

"Way back in 2016 Jan Raaijmakers introduced the idea to support health innovators by setting up a national network of medical technology assessment specialists. Luckily, the HI-NL ambassadors took over this idea and turned it in what it is now: an expert infrastructure including all relevant stakeholders stimulating and advising innovators in their journey towards development, validation and implementation of their new products and services, always with respect to the healthcare and societal needs of an innovation - quite a crucial part of the trajectory of a healthcare innovation!"

Nico van Meeteren, Health~Holland 
 

Early dialogue for better health innovations

“From the start, the approach of HI-NL has reflected our objectives in the field of medical technology: a more coherent and proactive approach towards MedTech issues.” 

Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport

HI-NL is based on the idea that early dialogue between innovators and the relevant stakeholders contributes to the value and effectiveness of health innovations. To make that dialogue most impactful, all relevant stakeholders and innovators literally sit around the same table through HI-NL. Stakeholders connected through HI-NL include healthcare providers, patients, insurers, regulatory authorities, entrepreneurs, CE-experts and methodologists. By doing so, structured and comprehensive guidance from all relevant stakeholder perspectives, directly tailored to the innovation at hand and its phase of development, is provided to the innovators to bring the valuable innovations to end users faster and directly suited to their needs.

“HI-NL is providing what I hoped for: an open dialogue at the early stage of innovation development between scientists, healthcare professionals, healthcare insurance companies, regulatory bodies and patients. Particularly the involvement of patients and other end-users in the dialogue is helping to bridge the gap between healthcare and societal demands and innovative solutions.”

Marilène van Hussen, Patiëntenfederatie Nederland
 

Looking back

In our first year we focused on setting up our so-called Round Table service and embedding the HI-NL infrastructure in the Dutch MedTech and healthcare landscape. Before our launch in January 2020, we ran a few pilot Round Tables, with all costs covered by HI-NL partners. The learnings from this pilot phase were essential to launch a professional Round Table service for innovators in 2020. Round Table meetings were initially face to face, and later on we successfully moved to fully online meetings due to Covid-19.
 

“Despite the Corona crisis, HI-NL has succeeded in continuing to organize digital ‘Round Tables’. The use of ‘round tables’ which enabled a focused and tailor made multistakeholder perspective on specific innovations, including Corona related, turned out to be a successful formula”

Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
 

In total 7 Round Tables were organized in the first year, covering a broad range of innovations such as 3D printing, eHealth, diagnostics, robotics, and a COVID-19 Rapid test. The feedback we received from the innovators as well from all participating stakeholders is extremely encouraging.

“I think the biggest success of HI-NL is that they have brought (almost) all the stakeholders in the room, with a concrete task to accomplish. That really works! It does help the entrepreneurs to finetune their product, but it also brings to light all the steps necessary for the innovation’s journey “from bench to bedside”.

Fenna Heyning, STZ
 

“HI-NL has very swiftly gained position in the health and care ecosystem as a trustworthy partner and critical friend “4all”.”

Nico van Meeteren, Health~Holland
 

To ensure Round Tables can be offered to innovators in a sustainable way, the costs are covered either by innovators themselves or the investors backing them. In addition, to make the service broadly accessible for all sorts of innovators (including start-ups and healthcare providers) and types of innovations, HI-NL partners with various funding programs. Examples of programs available to innovators to (partly) fund the Round Table service are the Health~Holland Match Call program and the IMDI Call program. The first Round Table sessions making use of such funding methods have already been held. They provide a great opportunity for all innovators to make use of HI-NL’s service, at a reduced rate.

…and looking forward

In 2020, a strong foundation has been laid with bringing stakeholders together and establishing a consistent flow of our Round Table service. In the coming years, HI-NL will build on this success and expand its service as well as its scope beyond Round Tables.

Our vision is to create a consistent, transparent, and applicable evaluation and implementation framework for all types of healthcare or medical technology innovations, including eHealth. Such framework needs to be co-designed with all relevant stakeholders and deeply embedded in the Dutch medical technology development, regulatory and reimbursement landscape. With this, the Netherlands  will also play a pioneering role in the international context through HI-NL, providing a successful infrastructure with clear cut guidance and templates for guidance on how to effectively implement the new  MDR and IVDR to bring the valuable and promising innovations to end users faster, and de-implement the ones that appear not valuable as early as possible in the development or evaluation process.

Clearly, health innovations by definition have an international scope and usability. Cooperation with existing and new international networks will increase our scope and impact. First steps have already been made by working together with EXCITE international, an international cooperation of networks and partners with goals that match HI-NL’s mission. On 2-3 June 2021 HI-NL together with Health~Holland, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and EXCITE international will organize the Global Access to Innovations in Healthtech (GAINH) meeting on how to achieve global access to innovations in healthcare.

We are grateful and proud of what we have achieved in the past year. At the same time, we see that the role of MedTech -including biomarkers, AI and eHealth- is becoming increasingly important and that the Netherlands can play a very important role. Because of our unique infrastructure, we can set an example for other countries. We are looking forward to continue and expand this role with our partners.

Maroeska Rovers and Carl Moons, HI-NL
 

Thank you!

HI-NL is all of us, and its success is the success of us all. The first year of HI-NL has been a great journey and established HI-NL as a defining nationwide infrastructure for the future of health innovation. This would not have been possible without the support and open collaboration of our partners and innovators. A big THANK YOU for your contribution last year, we are looking forward to an exciting 2021. Let’s continue to bring health innovation to the next level, together!