Dutch information policies in the near future

The Dutch Ministry of Welfare, Health and Culture played an important part in Picture Archiving and Communicating Systems (PACS)-related activities in the Netherlands. It subsidized a large Dutch PACS project, which took place in the period 1986-1989. Moreover the ministry subsidized this workshop on the Technology Assessment of PACS. In this paper, the Director of the Information Policy department of the ministry explains the backgrounds of Dutch policy in the support of development and evaluation of information technologies applied in the health care sector in general and, more specifically, of PACS.