National ACCESS consortium launched to improve acute care for patients across the Netherlands

At the heart of the project is the development of an integrated triage solution, the Acute Care Triage Platform, that will better connect ambulance services and hospitals. The system combines patients’ clinical data with information about travel times, hospital capacity and available treatment options. This will help ambulance professionals determine more quickly which hospital is best equipped to treat an individual patient.

A broad consortium

ACCESS will be launched as a strategic public-private partnership funded by Health Holland and TKI Dinalog. The consortium brings together regional ambulance services, hospitals and research institutions, including UMCG, Erasmus MC, UMC Utrecht, Amsterdam UMC, the University of Groningen and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI). Private partners include Logiqcare, AZNConnect and TimeLab. Lygature, the Dutch Heart Foundation, the Dutch Brain Foundation and the Dutch CardioVascular Alliance are also involved.

Role of CWI

Within ACCESS, CWI will develop data-driven stochastic models to optimize the dispatch and relocation of ambulances. These models are intended to help emergency medical services respond more quickly and make more efficient use of the available ambulance capacity.

According to project leader Maarten Lahr of UMCG’s Department of Epidemiology, the project responds to pressing challenges in acute care:

“In acute care, every minute counts. Yet patients with a suspected stroke, acute cardiovascular condition or severe trauma are still too often taken to a hospital that is not adequately equipped to treat their specific condition. This delays treatment and can lead to avoidable complications, particularly in sparsely populated regions.”

Building on existing regional initiatives

The new platform builds on existing initiatives developed in several regions. It will first be implemented in the south-western Netherlands, followed by central and northern regions of the country.

Lahr: “Each region has its own characteristics, and local healthcare providers and administrators will be closely involved in the implementation.”

Three goals for the next three years

Over the next three years, ACCESS will work towards three concrete goals: an integrated triage platform for neurological, trauma-related and cardiovascular emergencies; intelligent ambulance routing supported by logistics software; and a link between ambulance and hospital data.

This link will give healthcare professionals insight into patients’ final diagnoses and outcomes, helping to create a system that continuously learns from clinical practice.

Equal access to the best possible emergency care

ACCESS aims to contribute to a more resilient acute-care system in which patients are directed to the right hospital more quickly, available capacity is used more efficiently and new knowledge is generated to improve acute care in the Netherlands.

Lahr: “With ACCESS, we are showing how improvements in public healthcare and private-sector expertise can reinforce one another. For the first time, healthcare and logistics partners are working towards a shared ambition: that everyone in the Netherlands, regardless of where they live, has an equal opportunity to receive the best possible care in an emergency.”

The collaborative project is co-funded through a PPP grant awarded by Health Holland [HH-PPS-25131] and TKI Dinalog [TKI Dinalog 2026-1-439-TKI] to support public–private partnerships. It is co-funded under the PPP Allowance scheme for Research and Innovation of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.

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