This book highlights the work of pioneers in this field, in order to inspire their peers, healthcare leaders and an interested audience. Prior to the respective care practices, the authors describe the core of personalized care and illustrate its connections to value-driven care and evidence-based medicine. The last part of the book addresses organizational and other conditions under which personalized care can thrive.

Scenario 1: You are able to surgically remove the most difficult tumors and find out one day that you don't need to do so in all indicated patients. Later you can find out how to recognize when surgery isn't the best treatment for certain patients. And now your team has a fixed routine to find the optimal choice together with the patient.

Scenario 2: You consider yourself to be a patient-centered doctor who is really in touch with their patients - until you ask them to report for themselves on how they are doing. In the 'patient-reported outcomes' you see that you have completely missed an important aspect. Later, you can structurally integrate this into your outpatient clinic. 

Scenario 3: In line with the planning principles of your hospital, you see chronic patients once a year - and of course also 'as needed' - until your data shows you that you see patients too early or too late, but rarely when it would be most helpful. Later you can discover how to offer your consultation exactly on time - based on early signals and often even before the patient calls the clinic. 

Nico van Weert MSc, PhD, is trained in Medical Sociology and did his PhD in 1991 at the Faculty of Medicine of Radboud University (RU) in Nijmegen. He was appointed at the RU for Health Services Research till 1999, when he accepted an assignment to develop a quality and innovation department for one of the largest teaching hospitals in the Netherlands at the time, Atrium Medical Centre. He was responsible for the hospital-wide accreditation, which was achieved in 2003, and for the introduction of new methods, yielding breakthrough results. His work provided the basis for an integrated approach of quality management by medical staff and hospital management. In 2009 he accepted the new planning & control role Manager Quality and Safety and led the development of comprehensive quality reporting by all divisions to the board and the national healthcare inspectorate. In 2009 he founded with colleagues STZ-Zuid, a collaborative on healthcare quality of seven teaching hospitals in the South of the Netherlands, which he has been coordinating till 2016.  From 2015 till September 2020 Nico van Weert was coordinator of the NFU-consortium Quality of Care, the collaborative of the eight university medical centres in the Netherlands aiming at improving patient outcomes and experiences. He is an independent advisor on governance and quality. 

Jan A. Hazelzet, MD PhD, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. After finishing Polytechnic School in Dordrecht (Technical Physics), Jan Hazelzet studied medicine and received his medical degree from the Erasmus Medical School in Rotterdam and specialized in Pediatrics at the Sophia Childrens Hospital in Rotterdam and in Hopital Necker Enfants Malades in Paris. He has a long clinical experience as Pediatric Intensivist, and Associate-Professor in Pediatrics. He holds a PhD of the Erasmus University on meningococcal sepsis and a Master in Management from the University of Utrecht (USBO). Gradually he moved to the field of information and quality, first in the position of chief medical information officer (CMIO) of Erasmus MC, later as professor in Health Care Quality & Outcome, department of Public Health. Jan supervised more than 20 PhD students and published more than 130 scientific papers. He is the clinical lead of the Value-Based Health Care Program in Erasmus MC and the shift towards a more Patient-Centered Care. Jan is active in several national (NFU) and international projects and consortia (EUHA). Current research interests: patient reported outcome and experience, patient engagement, implementation and effects of value driven health care, healthcare data management and analysis, as well as sustainability in health care.