Nanomedicines have the potential to save lives, but their clinical development faces various obstacles. These include a.o. incomplete knowledge about their functioning at the cellular level, lack of standardization in the characterization of nanomedicines, and suboptimal knowledge exchange among the involved parties. NanoMedNL aims to overcome these obstacles by consolidating knowledge and expertise in a virtual center, where researchers, patients, doctors, pharmaceutical industry and regulatory authorities collaborate on the next generation of nanomedicines.

There is substantial attention for digital health innovations to improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare. While physicians and other stakeholders see benefits, the actual use is restricted because healthcare providers, hospital boards and health insurers have specific requirements for reimbursement, guideline development and evidence based medicine that do not necessarily align with digital innovations. Together with healthcare providers and health innovators we want to create joint strategies to stimulate the implementation of digital innovations. We use MS sherpa, a tool for monitoring of multiple sclerosis, as case to address these problems, that are also relevant for other digital tools.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease with high variability in symptoms and unpredictable disease course, leading to heavy personal, economic and societal burden. Our proposal aims to develop and evaluate a smartphone application which provides personalized lifestyle information (insight, education and advice) to people with MS based on data collected through self-monitoring (smartphone sensors and Fitbit). Insight and education will be targeted at increasing the patients’ knowledge of their disease, whereas advice will consist of easy tips to make lifestyle adjustments that are proven to alleviate the burden of MS. This approach is expected to enhance self and joint management of MS, which will result in increased quality of life and self-efficacy. Our project consists of four consecutive steps. Firstly, to provide personalized information we will develop algorithms guided by data from previous studies in which people with MS used self-monitoring. Secondly, together with (end)users (people with MS and healthcare professionals) we will co-create the smartphone application. Thirdly, patients attending the VUmc MS center will participate in a randomized control trial with this smartphone app for six months. The effectiveness and efficiency of this intervention will be examined via quantitative outcome measures (patient wellbeing, healthcare outcomes and adherence to self-monitoring) and a study into (end)users’ experiences, e.g., how does self-monitoring affect experiences of disease management, empowerment and patient-physician interaction? Finally, our findings are used to develop empirically informed guidelines together with relevant stakeholders for the successful adoption of self-monitoring based disease management in the MS healthcare ecosystem.

The CurveBend project focuses on halting biodiversity loss and promoting a nature-positive society through collective action at the landscape level. It studies the spatial needs of animals for various habitats on a landscape scale, as well as the demands people place on different parts of the landscape, and seeks solutions for their mismatches in co-creation with societal partners. With "boots on the ground," CurveBend works in three livestock-dominated regions: the lowland meadows of the Netherlands, the Argentine pampas, and the savannas in Tanzania/Kenya, to find innovative, applicable solutions for biodiversity restoration at a landscape scale that inspire worldwide.