Personalized Prevention and Care
How can we integrate differences between individuals into health care?
Research focus
Health care costs are rising worldwide and we need to know how we can contain the costs, while maintaining a good quality of the care. To ensure that our healthcare system is ready for the future, we need a new perspective on health, prevention and care that acknowledges the differences between people and corresponds more closely to their personal performances and experiences. Many of our treatments or preventive interventions are not effective in large groups of the patients or citizens. In fact, some treatments or interventions even have adverse effects. Personalized care is tailor-made prevention and or treatment for individuals or groups of individuals that work best. This means give each and every patient and citizen the right care, at the right moment, in his or her own home environment, with maximum effect and minimum side-effects and costs.
Our research focuses on (a) selective prevention, including lifestyle interventions, (b) personalized healthcare, including shared decision making and (c) diagnostics, using computational statistics and predictor models. With the use of different sources such as smart phones, wearable sensors, email and social media and the use of advanced statistics and methods we obtain personal and long term data. Technological innovations make it possible to measure all kinds of states, such as emotions, behavior, well-being and also how we adapt ourselves to changing situations. Enormous amounts of longitudinal data on individuals, their diseases and the consequent dynamics in their daily functioning need to be studied in order to understand the biological and functional variations between individuals.
Interdisciplinary approach
We refine knowledge of the ageing and sickness process and interventions in an interdisciplinary manner. We will develop and use new methods such as imaging and monitoring technologies that will speed up the pipeline between laboratory and life. This way, citizens and healthcare professionals are able to use more and more new digital technologies and personalized decision-support systems for individuals as well as for their formal and informal supportive networks to help patients manage their own health and functioning. The new forms of care will close the innovation gap between the laboratory and individual patient. We need to set up new cooperations between researchers, different societal stakeholders and patients and citizens at large.
Research networks:
Cross-cutting theme coordinator:
Current PhD projects:
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Predicting Postpartum Depression Using Early Warning Signals [PhD Project]
The aim of this project is to identify causal predictors for postpartum depression and use them to create a deep-learning algorithm for personalized prevention that uses early warning signals to predict an episode before it even occurs.
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Life after Trauma [PhD Project]
The aim of this project is to increase the understanding of differences in patterns of physical, psychological and social recovery within and between trauma patients.
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[Project duration: 2021 - 2025] -
Personalized Cognitive Diagnostics for Early Detection of Dementia [PhD Project]
Dr. Ruth Mark and her colleagues hope to improve the early diagnosis of dementia.
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[Project duration: 2020 - 2024] -
Automated risk stratification for infectious complications in immunodeficiency [PhD project]
Using natural langue processing techniques, we will improve the timely detection of increased infectious risk in patients treated with immunomodulatory drugs.
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[Project duration: 2021 - 2025]
Current Seed Funding projects:
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Towards accurate assessment of physical activity and sleep in cancer survivors: A validation study [Seed Funding]
We aim to validate the wrist-worn Fitbit Inspire HR against the wrist-worn research-grade Actigraph wGT3X in a population of breast cancer survivors to measure physical activity and sleep.
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Personalized Measurement and Care: Validating A Novel Patient-Friendly Experience Sampling Measurement Design [Seed Funding]
This project will develop a highly personalized measurement design that strikes an optimal balance between thoroughly mapping patients’ symptoms and keeping the number of items a person needs to answer to a minimum.
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Developing a lifestyle tool to initiate, change and maintain health behaviours in Type 2 diabetes [Seed Funding]
The current project aims to establish which factors are needed to develop a lifestyle tool based on CBT principles that is focused on sustaining healthy behaviours over the long-term at the individual level.
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YOU MIND plus [Seed Funding]
This project is the result of a collaboration between the Departments of Developmental Psychology (DP) and Medical and Clinical Psychology (MCP) and combining expertise in mindfulness and psychological well-being.
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Fatigue and pain in lung and renal cell cancer patients [Seed Funding]
This project will investigate whether intensive monitoring of patients’ symptoms using a smartphone app could support personalized cancer care.
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The role of positive psychological constructs in cardiac patients’ health behaviour [Seed Funding]
This study will focus on the role of positive psychology constructs (e.g. optimism, positive affect, flexibility) in health behaviour.
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A lifestyle tool for health behaviours in Type 2 diabetes [Seed Funding]
Dr. Soedamah-Muthu and Dr. Mark aim to establish which factors are required to develop a lifestyle tool based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy principles.
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[Project duration: 2020 - 2021] -
Patterns of fatigue in patients with benign and malignant brain tumors [Seed Funding]
This research project investigates latent patterns of fatigue in patients with brain tumors before start of treatment, and their relationship with disease and patient characteristics.
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[Project duration: 2020 - 2021] -
Cognitive rehabilitation therapy for patients with somatic symptom and related disorders [Seed Funding]
Dr. Lars de Vroege and Prof. Dr. Willem Kop will evaluate the added value of CRT compared to the standard-of-care treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy.
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[Project duration: 2020 - 2021] -
Attention to Fathers: Unravelling Factors Influencing Paternal Postpartum Depression [Seed Funding]
Postpartum feelings of depression in fathers are prevalent and can have a negative impact on child development and family functioning. However, research on influencing factors is scarce and underdeveloped. Dr. Boekhorst and her colleagues will bridge this knowledge gap by prospectively examining paternal, maternal, and infant factors influencing postpartum feelings of depression in fathers.
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Students’ Mental Health: The Social Network Experience Sampling Model for Detecting Early Warning Signals of Worsening Mental Health [Seed Funding]
College students report increased rates of mental health issues that have only worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is alarming because mental health problems do not only affect the student but also fellow students and university staff, the campus, and society. Preventing mental illness in students is therefore a priority. To guide prevention efforts, this project investigates early warning signals (EWS) of worsening mental health.
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