Bart Verkerke

15:00 - 16:15 - session: Real-world health

Prof. Dr. G.J. (Bart) Verkerke is professor in BioMedical Product Design at both the University Medical Center Groningen and University of Twente. He is technical-scientific director of SPRINT, a Dutch Center of Research Excellence. SPRINT focuses on realising a sustainable healthcare by designing smart sensors creating data as input for a self-learning decision support system that determines the best intervention for citizens to improve their lifestyle. An important aspect of SPRINT is user and industrial involvement in all projects from the early start. Research interests are biomechanics and the methodical design of medical products, including teamwork; how to work together with many different disciplines in an efficient and effective way. He is also Director of the Groningen Biomedical Engineering Master’s Programme, owns 12 patents, and realized more than 190 publications, and 40 book chapters.

Sensor data, medical expertise and motivation strategies for a sustainable healthcare

Future healthcare will focus more on prevention of health decline and decline of health-related Quality of Life of citizens than on curing patients. Essential for success of prevention is firstly adoption of a healthy lifestyle by citizens. Personalized Technology using smart sensor and intervention systems create data that enable health self-management. A second prerequisite for success is a holistic view on health, improving all aspects of lifestyle, including stress, sleep, fatigue, activity, food. That means that many data need to be created and smart algoritms must derive the most effective way to avoid health decline. A third requirement for success is motivation of citizens to use this Personalized Technology. When such a smart sensor system is realized, in combination with a self-learning decision support system that derives the most effective intervention to improve lifestyle, prevention of health-decline can be realized and a sustainable health care will result.