Friday, November 14, 2025
The company Ditto Care has been named the winner of the South Holland preliminary round for the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs 2026. The preliminary round took place during the Festival Gezond Verstand in The Hague.
Ditto Care will represent Zuid-Holland in the finals of the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs 2026 during the Health Valley event on 12 March 2026 in Nijmegen. The presentation of the national jury award and the audience award will take place at Zorg&ICT on 15 April in Utrecht.
Conversation with the doctor in understandable language
When information is transferred from healthcare provider to patient, a lot of important information gets lost. Sixty percent of what doctors say is forgotten, and of the forty percent that is remembered, half is misunderstood. This increases the risk of mistakes, repeat consultations, and adds pressure to the healthcare system. Especially when a diagnosis is serious or health literacy is limited, it can be difficult to truly understand and remember what the doctor or healthcare provider says.
With Ditto Care, patients record their medical consultation using their own phone. Ditto Care translates the conversation with an AI application into understandable language, or into another language, within minutes. Patients can share the conversation with others, such as caregivers, ensuring that important information is correctly followed up. See also Ditto Care | Heldere zorg.
“Concrete solution to a problem that is close to patients”
The jury, consisting of Moshe Sijben from Yes!Delft, Karin de Booij from Riga, and Cindy van Spronsen from ROC Mondriaan, chose Ditto Care because it solves a concrete problem that is close to the daily experience of both patients and healthcare professionals, and relieves and supports them in an accessible way.
“We focus primarily on patients, and that is why broad attention for our solution is important,” says Tobias Polak of Ditto Care. “We are surprised by the interest we have already received. With input from these users, we can further enrich the solution in the coming year, among other things by offering even more languages. By participating in the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs, we hope to gain even more attention and continue developing.”
Ditto Care is competing with other regional winners for a national jury award of €10,000 or an audience award of €5,000.
Three finalists pitch their solution
In addition to Ditto Care, two other Zuid-Holland regional finalists pitched their solution during the Festival Gezond Verstand: Deep Breath and MLM-Tool.
When people end up in the intensive care unit, they are often placed on mechanical ventilation. Deep Breath is developing an AI tool that interprets monitoring data and can warn of complications or rapid deterioration. Most abnormalities during mechanical ventilation cannot be detected by machines using simple algorithmic alarms. Deep Breath does this automatically and additionally provides clinical staff with actionable insights, for example about personalized care. See also: Deep Breath Research – Accelerate Your Clinical Studies
A crucial role in health and appropriate care is the social network of individuals. Social health forms the foundation, yet this foundation is still barely incorporated in how we organize care and support. The MLM-Tool is a practical digital tool that makes a person’s social network visible. Professionals gain insight into (social) factors that determine effective care. At the same time, personal strength, autonomy, and shared resilience are reinforced, and the network can be involved from the start. This helps determine which care and support can come from the social context and where professional care is necessary. See also: MLM-Tool.
About the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs
For healthcare entrepreneurs, turning their business into a real success remains a challenge, even if they have already thoroughly tested and launched their innovation. To encourage these entrepreneurs, Zorginnovatie.nl will award the Nationale Zorginnovatieprijs for the eleventh time in 2026 to the most innovative healthcare solution in the scaling-up phase. Participants have a chance to win the jury award worth €10,000 and the audience award worth €5,000. In addition, they receive guidance for the further development and upscaling of their innovation.
Photo: Provincie Zuid-Holland / Sander Foederer
