Why I started Zorglane

Before moving to the Netherlands, I had ICL eye surgery in my home country. My surgeon required regular check-ups afterwards, which I assumed would be simple to arrange here.

It wasn't. I contacted clinic after clinic and was turned down again and again because the operation hadn't been done in the Netherlands. There was no clear place to ask, and for more than six months I couldn't find anyone who would do the check-up.

When I started talking to other expats, I realised I wasn't alone. One friend arrived partway through teeth-aligner treatment and needed a new retainer, only to find that having her teeth moulded again here would cost far more than she expected. Another needed a specific medication and spent a long time searching before discovering it simply wasn't available in the Netherlands.

In each case, the care had started in one country, and nobody could explain how to continue it in another. Good care exists here, but the Dutch healthcare system is genuinely complex: you need your GP to get almost anywhere, insurance rules decide what you can do and where, some treatments need approval in advance, and waiting lists differ from one clinic to the next. Language is only one of the barriers. Even with perfect Dutch, the information is scattered across dozens of websites, offices and letters, and nobody connects the dots for you, especially when your situation doesn't fit the usual path.

Zorglane is what we all wish we'd had: one place that shows you the next step, in plain English, with sources you can trust, ideally before you even move.

— Yao, founder

What Zorglane does

Zorglane helps expats move their healthcare to the Netherlands, step by step. Answer a few questions and you'll see where you are, what to do next, and where to find the official information behind it, whether you're planning a move, continuing treatment or medication, need a specialist or dental care, or are recovering from a procedure. The medication checker shows whether a medicine from your home country is registered here and whether it needs special paperwork to bring with you.

What Zorglane doesn't do

I'm not a doctor or pharmacist, and Zorglane doesn't give medical advice. It won't tell you whether to have a treatment, which medicine to take, or whether a symptom is serious. Those decisions belong with you and your doctor or pharmacist. Zorglane helps you understand the system around them.

If you need help urgently: call 112 in an emergency, the huisartsenpost in the evening or at the weekend, or 113 if you're thinking about suicide.

How we check information

• Every fact is checked against official sources, such as Dutch government and regulator websites, before it's published.
• Guides and the medication checker show their sources and when each fact was last checked.
• Rules that change every year, like the eigen risico, are re-checked every January.
• When something isn't clear from official sources, we say so rather than guess.

Spotted something wrong or out of date? Please tell us at hello@zorglane.com. Corrections are made as quickly as possible.

How Zorglane stays independent

• No clinic, insurer or company can pay to influence what Zorglane tells you.
• If Zorglane ever works with partners, this page will say who they are and how the partnership works.
• We never sell or share your information.

Your privacy

We use PostHog, hosted in the EU, for basic analytics: how many people visit each page, which lane in the tool is started and finished (by name only), and which link you arrived from, if any. It's cookieless, nothing is stored on your device between visits, we don't store your IP address or your location, and it never receives your answers, your searches, or anything you type into a form. The questionnaire, the medication checker and the moving checklist run in your browser — your answers, searches and checklist are not saved or sent to us, and the checklist is stored only on your own device, where you can delete it at any time. The only other data we collect is what you choose to send us through the waitlist (including the optional "what would help most" follow-up) or the medication checker's "tell us which medicine" form, all processed by Netlify, our hosting provider; we only use it to decide what to build and which medicines to add. Netlify records the submitting IP address with each of these forms. You can ask to be removed at any time by emailing hello@zorglane.com.

Help make Zorglane better

Have you been through something Zorglane doesn't cover yet, or found a step that was harder than it looks here? Your experience can help the next person. Write to hello@zorglane.com.