What is a PGO?
A PGO, short for personal health environment, is an app or website in which you can collect and manage your own medical data. You collect data from your GP, hospital, pharmacy or other healthcare providers, and you store them in one place that is yours. You log in with DigiD and the exchange takes place via agreements recorded under the name MedMij, so that different PGO apps can securely retrieve data in the same way.
The idea behind it is strong and fits exactly with what Zorgfuik stands for: not the agency, but the person in the middle. You keep your own file, you decide who can see what, you don't have to tell your story again at every counter.
The PGO is not a luxury but a necessity. Anyone who gets stuck in healthcare almost always loses the overview first. A place where your data comes together is the beginning of control. We are in favor of the PGO, which is precisely why we are honest about what is not yet working.
What is in a PGO?
The content is growing, but at the moment you can usually pick up these parts and put them together bring:
That is valuable. But it is mainly a collection of separate data next to each other. There is no layer over it that says: this is your situation, this is the common thread, this is what still needs to be done. Exactly that overview is what people in a care trap are looking for most.
The Dutch digital healthcare landscape
The PGO is not the only system. There are multiple layers, each with its own purpose and its own owner. Green: you have access to it. Gray: it works in the background between healthcare providers. Orange: it is under construction.
PGO
Your own environment. Collects data via MedMij, logged in with DigiD.
VolgjeZorg & Mitz
No PGO, but your permissions and a logbook: who was allowed to share what via the LSP. Mitz takes over recording choices.
Hospital portals
Each hospital has its own login with your file there. Separate from the rest.
LSP
The National Exchange Point: allow healthcare providers to request data from each other, with your permission.
Twiin
Agreements to share images and data between healthcare institutions exchange.
Linking language
Standard that links mental healthcare systems together for blended care.
My Health Overview
National facility under development to bundle your data show.
EHDS
The European Health Data Space: European agreements on access and exchange of health data.
You
Not an administrator. Own energy. You are the one who ties it together in practice.
The problem is not that there is too little technology. The problem is that no one is ultimately responsible for your complete picture. Each system does its part neatly. No one does the sum.
What is missing: the diagnosis overview
You can see your medications, your results, your appointments in a PGO. But you won't find one thing anywhere: an up-to-date, coherent overview of what is actually going on with you, and who is responsible for what. That is not a technical limitation that will be solved by itself. It is a choice in how the system is structured: everyone registers their own piece, no one the coherence.
For someone with one complaint and one practitioner, this is not a disaster. For someone who goes back and forth between GP, ​​hospital, GGZ and municipality, it is exactly the place where the care trap arises: everyone sees a part, no one sees the whole, and you get to keep it together.
The missing role: an independent owner with mandate
A PGO gives you the data. But data is not direction. What is missing is a role: someone with an overview and mandate, who navigates through all those systems on your behalf and can make decisions. We call that role an independent owner with mandate.
PGO, LSP, municipality, GGZ: an independent owner knows which system is for what and where it gets stuck.
Connects the separate pieces into one picture of your situation, something that no system currently does. does.
No extra discussion table, but the authority to actually set a deadlocked situation in motion.
The personal health environment and ownership belong together. The PGO brings your data together, an owner with mandate gets your case moving. Without that role, the PGO remains a beautiful cupboard full of folders for which no one has final responsibility.
In-depth video
What is a PGO?
Why a PGO alone is not enough
The full explanation
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Do you recognise this?
Are you stuck because no one has the overview? Share your experience. In this way we make visible how often this happens, and why that ownership role is needed.