Vierstroom: making the impact of healthcare technology measurable

Margriet van Rooijen-Dröge, Vierstroom Zorg Thuis, shares her experiences

Vierstroom Zorg Thuis focuses entirely on community nursing: providing personal care and nursing services in people’s homes. The organization has approximately 600 employees, divided among 40 community teams and a group of dementia case managers. Vierstroom is part of Fundis, a holding company that covers the entire VVT chain.

Since 2020, Vierstroom has been using care technology with its clients. The question that followed was as logical as it was difficult to answer: Does this technology actually save time? Because every client is unique, it proved difficult to measure this independently. The goal was to use data to substantiate the effect of care technology on the number of care hours provided.

“What I really like about this collaboration is that we’re truly bringing data and practice together.”

Statistical matching as a method

EscuLine (part of SureSync) developed an approach in which, for every client receiving care technology, ten comparable clients without technology are selected. To do this, they look at personal characteristics such as gender, age, and hours of care prior to the technology’s implementation. Later, domains from the NANDA classification system were also added, allowing for more information about the type of client and the nature of their issues to be included. The next step is to include diagnoses in order to account for periods of increased care needs, such as wound care or an overburdened informal caregiver.

The results are nuanced. Some tools have an immediate effect on the number of care hours; with others, the results are disappointing. At the same time, the research shows that care technology has the greatest impact when it is implemented right from the start of care—something that does not always happen in practice. The data are now helping to convince teams of this.

Not every assistive device is primarily intended to save hours. Some focus on well-being or early detection and can prevent hospitalizations in the long term. This is harder to measure directly but has the potential for a much greater impact.

Toward Decision Support

Vierstroom’s vision for the future goes beyond looking back. The goal is ultimately to support community nurses and case managers in deploying the right technology at the right time, based on client characteristics. To achieve this, the organization is exploring AI-driven text analysis of data from the ECD, including open-text fields, which results in concrete recommendations or alerts. Vierstroom also aims to measure other outcomes, such as the length of time clients can continue living at home and the prevention of hospital or nursing home admissions.

The Right Home Care Technology for the Right Client

For 6 out of 10 clients, home care technology results in an average of three fewer hours of care per month. For the other 4, it does not. How do you know in advance who belongs to which group? On June 29, 2026, we discussed with Margriet and others what home care technology actually delivers in terms of reduced hours in community nursing. The results are more down-to-earth than is often claimed, and that is precisely why they are useful for making strategic decisions.