120 Appendices ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In 2011 I wrote an article about ‘Telehealth’: in the CIO Magazine in the series ‘CIO in healthcare’. The article was a reflection of an interview with Guus Schrijvers. Even then, he had a strong opinion about the obstacles that stand in the way of good health care. He was clearly already thinking about his book ‘Care innovation according to the cappuccino model’ (2014). We talked about my research commissioned by HIMSS to investigate the degree of digitization in Dutch hospitals. He surprised me then by saying that he did not know whether this digitization would improve the quality of care. Guus thanks for the start and the guidance afterwards. And hopefully we will ‘experience’ something together in healthcare in the coming years. After Guus’ retirement in 2012, we realized that the extra 5 years to supervise PhD candidates would not be sufficient given the complexity of the matter. We found my former colleague at Organon, Kit Roes, willing to take over part of the guidance and eventually become the main promoter of the research project. The accuracy of this mathematician was the next challenge to take. It had to be ‘exact’. Kit, thanks for this experience. The theme ‘about you, without you’ led us to find the medical specialist Leonard Witkamp willing to participate in the research. He was of the opinion that we should also involve his fellowmedical specialists in the research and so it happened. It became the most beautiful part of the research project. Unfortunately, Leonard was unable to complete the joint ride because of the termination of his assignment as professor of ‘Telemedicine’ at the AMC. Leonard thanks for this valuable contribution and tip. The result was a series of interviews with eleven experienced medical specialists who took the time to reflect on the research question from their perspective, without hesitation. A shocking outcome is my conclusion: The medical specialist suffered a lot from the digitization wave and the ‘real’ positive effect on the quality of care was still doubtful in their eyes. Thank you, medical specialists, for their insight into your daily practice. Finally, and last but not least the role of my wife Vera. She repeatedly pointed out to me that there are other things to experience in this life than the digitization of healthcare. For example, two cats came to live with us and we bought a Volkswagen Van to explore the world up close. One of the cats regularly sat on my keyboard when I wanted to start writing an important analysis again. And Vera did not fail to regularly ask ‘shall we tour for a week ........’. But I understood that this is very normal, because Guus also regularly hung his trailer tent behind his car to explore the world with his wife Els.
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