Funding healthcare that makes sense
It can almost be considered a tradition; at the end of every year, health insurance companies announce that their premiums will be going up again the following year. But is this inevitable, or are there ways to keep healthcare costs in check? Maroeska Rovers, scientific director of the Technical Medical Centre, is convinced the latter is definitely possible.
Rovers calls for good research in advance into the added value for the patient of developing expensive technology. She put herself on the map with her research into the use of grommets, which were in vogue with ear, nose and throat specialists. But it turned out that in most children, middle-ear infections go away on their own. She was also able to numerically show that removing tonsils and adenoids wasn’t very efficient. The number of these types of operations dropped.
In order to prevent the widespread use of these types of costly yet inefficient treatment methods by the medical community, Dr Rovers decided to shift focus and is now studying the development phase of medical technology. Because it is better to switch gears in the earlier stages, than to conclude later on that things could have been done better. Using stakeholder analyses and models, she tries to determine at the earliest possible stage whether the new technology would be valuable to patients, or whether investing in it would be a waste of money.
‘I am very critical of the Da Vinci surgical robot, used by many doctors now in the removal of the prostate and the uterus, for example’. Rovers continues, ‘I do believe in robot surgery, it is the future, but this robot costs 2 million euros. This means the robot is proportionally more expensive than the surgeon, and the robot is not worse at the job, but also not that much better that it is worth the expense. At that point, you need to question which problem you are solving.’
Besides, you need to keep in mind the entire procedure and everything it entails, says Rovers. ‘The survival rates for patients with prostate cancer are relatively high, but one in three patients becomes incontinent and impotent following the procedure. The quality of life of these patients is impacted, and they still have out-of-pocket expenses, for adult nappies for example. This should be considered in advance as well.’
Due to new European legislation, companies in the healthcare technology sector now have to clearly define in advance which problem their new product intends to solve, and to what extent the product improves existing patient care. ‘While I am glad that there are rules now, it also knocks the wind out of innovation. And now is not the time to sit still. 1 in 6 people already work in healthcare. With society’s growing need for healthcare, this number is expected to rise to 1 in 3. We cannot go on like this. We need to solve the issue with technology, but in an efficient way.’
Education
After she was appointed scientific director of the UT Technical Medical Centre in 2022, Maroeska Rovers decided to put teaching on the back burner. She is still supervising PhD candidates, however, as well as giving guest lectures and developing e-learning modules to share her message with students. ‘I believe that thinking about the efficacy of new technology should be an intrinsic part of our educational programmes. How do you make the world a little better?’
Among the current cohort, Rovers observes a great interest in the sustainable side of medical technology. ‘Healthcare is a major polluter. A lot of material is used once in operating theatres and then discarded, for fear of infections. But students wonder, does it really need to be thrown away after single use? Could other materials provide a solution? It is natural for these students to consider this aspect. That’s great to see.’
ABOUT MAROESKA ROVERS
Since mid-2022, Maroeska Rovers has been the scientific director of the Technical Medical Centre (‘TechMed’) of the University of Twente, a leading institute that impacts healthcare through research, innovation and education. Dr Rovers is also Professor of Medical Technology & Innovation at Radboudumc in Nijmegen, and serves on the boards of multiple national and international healthcare organisations with a focus on pursuing innovation, such as Health Innovation Netherlands. Dr Rovers is responsible for more than 250 scientific publications, is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been awarded various prestigious research grants. Twice a year she teaches guest lectures to schoolchildren, hoping to interest them in science and technology.
Press photos
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