HealthchainStories
DIGICARE AWARE: Driving behavioural change for scalable remote monitoring
The need
Rijnstate has a Virtual Care Center for this, which is a department of specialized nurses who are responsible for the remote patient monitoring. Remote patient monitoring is necessary to keep healthcare accessible with the growing demand for healthcare and the decreasing number of healthcare professionals. To really transform healthcare, we need the majority of healthcare professionals to understand the necessity and know the possibilities. The question is how we can reach and encourage a large group of healthcare professionals (Rijnstate has ~3500 healthcare professionals)
The main objective is to scale up remote patient monitoring for more patients, by more healthcare professionals and for more patient populations to transform healthcare to make it futureproof.
The HealthChain Support
HealthChain supported Healthcare Organisations in identifying their innovation challenges and selecting companies to address them. They worked closely as an interregional team to co-create, test, and validate a solution aligned with real clinical workflows, patient needs, and organisational constraints. The project provided financial and business support to boost the solution’s market-readiness and commercialisation.
The
Solution
The solution for the Digicare-Aware challenge was a non-technical, behavioral change approach designed to increase awareness and drive the adoption of remote patient monitoring among healthcare professionals.
Developed through co-creation by Buro StrakZ and Ontwerpwerk, the solution centered on a comprehensive communication campaign with several key elements; campaign strategies, slogans, interactive mobile cart, engagement materials (goodies boxes), information, training and behavioural insights.
Impact
The project had a significant impact on both professional workflows and organizational culture:
- Staff reported better digital skills, increased enthusiasm for remote monitoring, and a better understanding of the patient’s journey within the application.
- The interactive mobile cart was highly successful in generating curiosity and making the operation of the monitoring app concrete for staff.
- Stronger collaboration between the Virtual Care Cener and clinical departments.
- Remote monitoring grew significantly within the hospital.
- Patients reported increased use of remote monitoring is expected to reduce hospital bed days and outpatient visits while giving patients greater control over their own health.
- The project’s success led to media coverage in local and national newspapers, highlighting the hospital’s innovation leadership.
For the SMEs, the impact was mainly based on:
- Implementation of core success factors across all departments while maintaining the flexibility to customise workflows for specific clinical needs.
- Recognition that healthcare professionals value agency, facilitate structured opportunities for staff to contribute to solution-building, directly improving long-term adoption and morale.
- Actively developing streamlined engagement models to involve physicians—the most time-constrained stakeholders—without adding to the burden of the current labor shortage.
Outcomes
The pilot successfully shifted the focus from technical tools to cultural and behavioral change, achieving the following results:
There was a total increase of 1,428 patients during the project period (October 2024 – October 2025).
Positive trends in patient inclusion were specifically noted in June and September/October 2025, directly correlating with the active phases of the communication campaign.
The project reached 22 care departments, involving approximately 1,100 participants through goodie boxes and over 200 professionals through targeted presentations.
Sustainability
To ensure long-term success beyond the funding period, several sustainability measures were implemented:
A new program for project leaders was established to embed adoption management and success factors into all future hospital initiatives.
All designed assets—including slogans, videos, photos, and infographics—can be reused for both staff training and patient communication.
Lessons learned are being integrated into training for elderly and primary care sectors.
Buro StrakZ has integrated the project’s insights into a forthcoming book on digital leadership (slated for January 2026) and existing training courses for other healthcare sectors like elderly and primary care.
Rijnstate is using the knowledge gained to refine its broader strategy for innovation adoption and behavioural change in healthcare transformation.
Ontwerpwerk has added the use case to its strategic plan to assist other organizations facing similar scaling challenges with remote technology.
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