The Mission

General practitioners in the Netherlands are under immense and growing pressure. Workloads are increasing, administrative burden is consuming time that should go to patients, and the personnel shortage is projected to grow from 3% in 2024 to 16% by 2034. The consequences are tangible: research shows that in 44.6% of serious patient complaints, poor diagnosis was the core issue, and in 23% of cases patients received insufficient care. These are not failures of individual doctors. They are the inevitable result of a system where GPs simply do not have enough time to do their job well. Sophia's mission is to change that. By making the GP's work easier, more supported, and less burdened by friction, we believe better care follows naturally. A GP who arrives at a consultation prepared, spends less time on administration, and has clearer information to work with is a GP who can focus on what they were trained to do: listen, diagnose, and treat. The patient does not need to be the starting point of the solution. They are the beneficiary of it.

The Challenge

The Dutch GP labour market is under severe and growing pressure. Recruiting staff is increasingly difficult, and high workloads combined with illness-related absenteeism are pushing practices to their limits (1). The Healthcare and Welfare Forecast Model projects a GP personnel shortage of 3% in 2024, rising to 16% by 2034 (2). The consequence is a system where GPs have less and less time per patient and the stakes are high. Research into GP-related patient complaints shows that of 74 serious cases, 44.6% involved misdiagnosis and 23% involved insufficient care (3). Patients feel unheard and underexamined, and those who cannot access timely care increasingly turn to unreliable online self-diagnosis. At the same time, the information flow around consultations remains inefficient. Administrative tasks consume close to 40% of a GP's working time and have been growing over recent years (4). Handovers to specialists are often incomplete or unstandardised, with research showing that GPs under higher workload send fewer and lower quality referral communications (5). No government solution is arriving fast enough and the problem demands a bottom-up, technology-driven response. References 1. Flinterman, L. E., et al. "De arbeidsmarkt van de Nederlandse huisartsenzorg in 2024." (2025). 2. Algemene Rekenkamer. Focus op huisartsentekort (2025). 3. Gaal, S., et al. "Complaints against family physicians submitted to disciplinary tribunals in the Netherlands." The Annals of Family Medicine 9.6 (2011): 522-527. 4. Batenburg, R., et al. "Complex Governance Does Increase Both the Real and Perceived Registration Burden." International Journal of Health Policy and Management (2022). 5. Schäfer, W., et al. "Communication between general practitioners and medical specialists in the referral process." BMC Family Practice 21 (2020).

The solution

Our proposed solution follows a research-first, evidence-driven development process built around the people it aims to serve. The first phase is qualitative research. We will conduct interviews with two to three GPs per province across all twelve Dutch provinces, reaching a minimum of 24 and a maximum of 36 practitioners. Participants will be recruited through established networks including the LHV, NHG, and regional huisartsenkringen. Alongside this, we will conduct qualitative research with patients, selected to reflect a broad representation of Dutch society across provinces, age, sex, socioeconomic background, educational level, and health status. Both research tracks will run in parallel with a structured literature review, ensuring that our interviews are informed by existing evidence and that we do not overlook problems already documented in academic research. Once the research phase is complete, we will translate the findings into a concrete problem statement and identify where software can meaningfully reduce friction in the GP's daily work. This translation will be validated with a small group of GPs before any development begins, ensuring the direction reflects real needs rather than assumptions. From there we enter an iterative development cycle. A first version of the software will be built and tested directly with stakeholders, gathering structured feedback on what works and what does not. This feeds into a second, improved version. The goal throughout is not to build technology for its own sake, but to build something that makes the GP's job genuinely easier and, as a result, delivers better care to patients.