Digital care usage among care providers and care users in 2025 remained largely unchanged compared to 2024. Some applications saw more frequent use, with more GPs and hospital doctors, for example, using video calls and AI-powered voice-to-text for tasks such as dictating clinical notes. There has been a notable rise in care users’ use of patient portals and self-help options, such as treatments for mental health conditions. This is according to the latest Digital Care Monitor of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (Nivel) and the National eHealth Living Lab (NeLL).
User numbers for other applications, such as personal health environments, continue to lag behind. Both care providers and care users also report that they see additional scope to further digitalise care processes, for example in information sharing and patient referrals. Medical specialists and nurses significantly increased their provision of digital services across almost all care processes, by an average of 21 per cent. The increase among GPs and social medicine practitioners was lower.
Attention to digital care accessibility
As digital care becomes more widely adopted, it is important to keep its accessibility in focus, especially for the elderly and people who have only completed primary or pre-vocational secondary education. They continue to use digital care less often than young people and those educated at university of applied sciences or research university level - a gap that has not narrowed since 2021. Engaging these groups in the ongoing digital care scale-up is important to ensure digital care is better tailored to their skills, preferences and needs.
Experiences of impact are similar
The impact of digital care on society is similar to the previous year, with care providers being especially positive about the impact of digital care on the accessibility of care and the control retained by patients. Care users particularly value the quality of care and the convenience of digital communication. A follow-up study is needed to gain better insight into the factors that determine the successful use of digital care.
RIVM conducts the Digital Care Monitor, together with Nivel and the National eHealth Living Lab (NeLL), on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. A new report will be published in 2027, and will include, among other things, an examination of the impact and use of digital care among care users in the light of users’ health literacy.