For decades, mental healthcare has largely followed the same model: patients meet with therapists during scheduled appointments and continue the work of recovery between sessions.

The challenge is that demand for care has changed faster than the model itself.

Waiting lists are growing. Clinicians face mounting administrative burdens. Providers are being asked to support more people with limited resources.

For Mental Care Group, one of the largest mental healthcare providers in the Netherlands, serving 80,000 to 100,000 patients annually across more than 150 locations, those pressures raised a fundamental question:

How do you improve access to care when you can’t simply add more therapists?

The answer wasn’t hiring more people or adding another system to an already crowded technology landscape. Mental Care Group believed the model itself needed to change.

“You can’t apply digitalization to an old process and expect it to go smoothly,” said Gerbrand van de Beek, Chief Digital Officer at Mental Care Group.

Instead of asking how technology could fit into existing processes, Mental Care Group began asking how care should work if it were designed today.

Choosing Ambition Over Off-the-Shelf Software

To patients, care felt like a single journey. Behind the scenes, it looked more like a collection of disconnected stops.

Clinical information, communications, treatment tools, and administrative workflows lived across multiple applications, forcing both patients and providers to constantly switch contexts. Important information existed, but rarely in one place.

Traditional electronic medical record (EMR) systems served as systems of record, storing diagnoses, clinical documentation, and formal records. But much of the day-to-day treatment experience lived elsewhere. Clinicians often spent valuable time searching for information rather than engaging with patients.

“The core of their work is not in the EMR. It’s outside and it’s very fragmented,” explained Peter Kuiters, IT Director and Enterprise Architect.

Mental Care Group knew the answer wasn’t simply another tool layered on top of the problem.

That vision led the organization to evaluate a range of commercial solutions. But the team found that most products addressed individual challenges rather than the broader experience they were trying to create.

“We had two options: develop our own solution or lower our ambitions,” said van de Beek.

After evaluating multiple low-code platforms, Mental Care Group selected Mendix.

The decision was about more than speed. The organization needed flexibility, security, healthcare readiness, and the ability to continuously evolve alongside changing patient and provider needs.

Rather than building a single application, Mental Care Group set out to create a connected experience that could support every stage of care delivery.

Creating a Continuous Care Experience

The first focus area was the patient experience.

Mental healthcare has traditionally revolved around appointments. A patient sees a therapist, leaves the session, and waits until the next interaction. Mental Care Group wanted to create something different.

The organization’s first Mendix application, HSK Flow, introduced digital intake, scheduling, preventative services, and self-service engagement capabilities. Built in just three months, it demonstrated how quickly modern digital experiences could be delivered.

That success led to Empower, a patient portal designed to keep patients connected to their care journey between appointments.

Patients can review information, communicate with providers, complete therapy assignments, and stay connected to treatment wherever they are. Instead of waiting for the next session to make progress, they can continue the work in between.

Kuiters described the philosophy behind the platform with a simple analogy:

That shift changed the rhythm of care.

For years, interaction largely happened during scheduled appointments.

“Before, they only saw each other once a week. Now they can chat every day,” said Anne-Rose van den Brand, IT Product Portfolio Manager at Mental Care Group.

Care is no longer confined to a single hour on the calendar. Patients can ask questions, complete assignments, access information, and stay engaged between sessions, creating a more continuous therapeutic experience.

Reducing Friction for Therapists

Patient empowerment addressed only half of the equation.

As demand for mental healthcare continued to increase, Mental Care Group also needed to ensure clinicians could spend less time navigating systems and more time supporting patients. Improving the patient experience meant improving the provider experience as well.

To address this, the organization developed Cortex, a digital workspace designed to bring together information from across the organization into a single experience.

Rather than forcing clinicians to jump between systems, Cortex acts as a central hub that surfaces information, consolidates workflows, and helps therapists focus on patients instead of processes.

The platform also reduces duplication. “They only have to enter the information once, and we can reuse it,” she explained.

By bringing together information that was previously scattered across multiple systems, Mental Care Group not only simplified workflows but also created a foundation for the next stage of innovation.

Making AI a Clinical Assistant

Once therapists no longer had to hunt for information, Mental Care Group began asking another question: What if they didn’t have to read it all either?

The organization wasn’t interested in implementing AI for the sake of innovation. Every capability needed to solve a real problem for providers or patients.

For clinicians, that meant reducing time spent reviewing records, documenting sessions, and searching for relevant context.

Today, Mental Care Group uses AI-powered capabilities such as speech-to-text, summaries, notifications, and contextual insights to support providers throughout the care journey.

“They’re very happy with the summaries because they don’t have to read all the information about a client,” said van den Brand.

The organization is equally deliberate about where AI should not be used.

“The key things to stay away from are making decisions,” said Kuiters. “We’re not making decisions. We’re giving signals.”

Instead, AI is used to surface patterns, reduce administrative effort, and help clinicians focus their attention where it matters most.

Looking ahead, Mental Care Group sees opportunities to further integrate AI throughout the care experience, from intelligent recommendations for therapists to assistants that guide patients and providers through next steps.

“We want the chatbot to think with the provider when they’re stuck on a client and don’t know what to do next,” said van den Brand. “The client and provider won’t have to know what’s next because they’ll get tipped by the AI.”

Reimagining the Future of Care Delivery

In many ways, Mental Care Group’s transformation started with a question and ended with another.

The first was: How do you improve access to care when you can’t simply add more therapists?

The second is: What becomes possible when care no longer begins and ends with an appointment?

Working with Mendix, Mental Care Group created a connected ecosystem that spans patients, providers, and administrators, building a foundation that continues to evolve alongside the needs of modern healthcare.

The results are already taking shape:

• Ten systems were consolidated into a unified experience
• In redesigned digital care programs, treatment pathways shortened by 30 to 40 percent while clinical outcomes were maintained — patients reached the same result in less time, freeing capacity for the next person waiting

But the bigger outcome extends beyond operational metrics. Patients are more connected to their care. Therapists spend less time navigating systems and more time helping people. Information moves more freely. Insights surface faster.

As demand for mental healthcare continues to rise, Mental Care Group believes the future of care won’t be built around more systems. It will be built around better experiences for the people who depend on them.