Lifestyles influence (mental) health and contribute to health quality and opportunities in life. These behaviours are closely linked to our living environment, determined by personal, socioeconomic, work, housing and other living circumstances. Despite considerable technological advancements, sustainable adoption of healthy lifestyles is challenging for vulnerable people, often showing poor health literacy and an accumulation of lifestyle and environmental risk factors. This leads to unacceptable and unethical health and socioeconomic inequalities. Our solution is to improve the adoption and sustainable adherence of healthy lifestyles by young vulnerable families in deprived neighbourhoods through “Our Smart Family Buddy” intervention. This Interactive Digital Buddy platform called ID-Buddy operates by an App and robot (Avatar) for human and environmental interactions and fosters health literacy, healthy lifestyles and reduces the impact of environmental risks. By operating as user-friendly eHealth solution, ID-Buddy is easily accessible to its target group. We will develop ID-Buddy by first mapping existing eHealth functionalities and implementation strategies for their applicability. Through field lab methodology, including co-creation and co-design in societal learning communities, functionalities fitting best with user-needs will be selected and implemented into ID-Buddy. The prototype will be further optimized and personalized using Artificial Intelligence strategies. Finally, we will test ID-Buddy for its usability, (cost-)effectiveness and (inter)operability. By the delivery of the evidence-based digital preventive ID-Buddy intervention, we will contribute to the structural and sustainable improvement of health equality for vulnerable citizens and their families. This will have a positive impact on overall well-being and promotes their societal opportunities.

More than 180.000 children and adults in the Netherlands are affected by an inborn bleeding disorder. They experience frequent bleeding episodes which cause extreme discomfort, invalidity due to joint and muscle bleeds, and sometimes death. Personalisation of treatment is urgently needed. It will safeguard quality of care while restraining rising costs in these debilitating and expensive diseases. Current treatment strategies are suboptimal and lead to either under treatment with risk of continued bleeding or overtreatment with excessive costs. Novel therapeutic approaches are upcoming and expected to be even more expensive. However, effectiveness, (long term) side effects and therefore, positioning and optimal use of these new treatments is not clear. Better insight into the pathophysiology of these diseases is required in order to develop more precise diagnostic techniques. Moreover, safe therapeutic approaches with minimal complications and their cost-effective patient orchestrated implementation are warranted. In this study proposal, we present a step-wise approach by an interdisciplinary team of experts in collaboration with stakeholders, to achieve 1) precision diagnosis; 2) to develop and implement safe and cost-effective treatment strategies; while 3) integrating yields of translational research. Highlights of the study are the development and systematic measurement of both patient-relevant outcome measures as well as costs of treatment, according to value-based health care methodology. In addition, e-health modules will aid implementation of treatment innovations and measurement of outcomes. Moreover, advanced laboratory techniques will be applied to develop novel diagnostic tests and to perform proteomic profiling to explain the interindividual variation of clinical manifestations in these bleeding disorders. Ultimately, the SYMPHONY consortium aims to identify best treatment choice for each individual with a bleeding disorder. Jointly, composing life-changing innovations with significant clinical and societal impact.

BIOMED - A conceptual model for adult Pompe disease

For a number of rare genetic diseases, lifelong cure can be obtained by correcting the genetic defect in the patients’ own blood stem cells. Many curative gene therapies do not reach patients for reasons other than a lack of treatment quality. We propose to develop platform infrastructure that can be used for many diseases rather than every time focusing on one approach unique for each disease. Simultaneously we address challenges regarding the regulation, reimbursement and public acceptance of these therapies in a knowledge hub for dialogue with society.