Inside Healthcare – Episode 5: Gijs van der Wielen (Sanday) on the Future of the HIS, Platform Thinking, and the Impact of Standards

About this episode (in Dutch)

In this episode, we welcome Gijs van der Wielen, CEO of Sanday, to discuss his vision on the future of the GP information system (HIS) and the broader shift toward platform-based healthcare ecosystems. The conversation focuses on how standards-driven innovation and thoughtful implementation approaches can unlock real value for healthcare professionals and patients alike.

Gijs shares practical insights into what makes digital health solutions truly successful in practice: simplicity, clear value, and seamless integration into existing clinical workflows.

The HIS of today and tomorrow

The traditional HIS is evolving from a closed system into a platform that connects workflows, data, and external services. Rather than acting as a standalone application, the HIS increasingly becomes the central hub that orchestrates hybrid care pathways, patient interactions, and data exchange across the care network.

This shift requires:

• Open architectures and interoperable standards

• Seamless workflow integration for clinicians

• User-friendly patient experiences

• The ability to quickly adopt new digital services

Platform thinking enables innovation without disrupting daily care delivery, allowing new capabilities to be layered on top of existing systems.

The impact of standards: FHIR and EHDS

A central theme in the interview is the growing importance of standards such as FHIR and the upcoming European Health Data Space (EHDS). These initiatives are not just technical frameworks; they define how healthcare data can be shared, reused, and governed across organizations and borders.

Standards-based ecosystems make it possible to:

• Exchange structured data reliably between systems

• Reuse clinical data across different care processes

• Support cross-organizational collaboration

• Prepare healthcare IT landscapes for future European regulations and data-sharing requirements

By building on standards, healthcare organizations can innovate faster while maintaining compliance and interoperability.

Simplicity as the key to successful adoption

One of the core messages from Gijs is that successful implementations are driven by simplicity and clear added value. Solutions that are easy to understand, intuitive to use, and seamlessly embedded in workflows are far more likely to be adopted by healthcare professionals.

As he emphasizes: real impact is achieved when a solution is simple, well understood, and demonstrably valuable — that is when users truly embrace it.

This philosophy underpins the partnership approach discussed in the episode, where hybrid care pathways can be offered directly from within the HIS, fully integrated into clinical workflows and highly user-friendly for patients.

Lessons for healthcare IT and implementation teams

The interview provides valuable insights for healthcare IT leaders, HIS vendors, and implementation teams working on interoperable, future-proof digital health solutions.

Key takeaways:

• The HIS is evolving into a platform for orchestrating care and data

• Open standards like FHIR are essential for scalable innovation

• EHDS will accelerate the need for interoperable, standards-based architectures

• Simplicity and clear value are decisive factors for user adoption

• Deep workflow integration determines whether solutions succeed in practice

Watch the full interview

Watch the full conversation with Gijs van der Wielen to learn how platform thinking, standards, and simplicity together shape the future of the HIS and successful digital health implementations.

Want to see similar HIS-integrated use cases in practice?

Curious how hybrid care pathways, structured data capture, and FHIR-based interoperability can be seamlessly embedded within your HIS workflows?

Request a demo to explore relevant use cases — from integrated patient questionnaires and monitoring flows to standards-based data exchange aligned with future EHDS requirements.