The healthcare sector is one of the most carbon-intensive sectors. In response, the Dutch government has called for more environmentally sustainable healthcare. The project ESCH-R addresses this challenge with its mission to accelerate the adoption of circular interventions in hospitals and thereby lower the ecological footprint of the healthcare sector. Our research question is: How can hospitals move away from single use medical consumables and make the transition towards circularity? Together with societal partners, our interdisciplinary team will develop circular, safe and scalable strategies for circularity. In the long-run, the ESCH-R project contributes to a sustainable and resilient health system.

Heart failure is a major public health problem leading to impaired quality of life, shortness of breath, and high mortality rates. In more than half of the cases, in women even more than in men, the important underlying cause is stiffening of the left ventricular part of the heart muscle, leading to poor filling of the heart. Currently there is no good test to diagnose increased stiffening of the heart and there is no good method of monitoring any therapy. The investigators propose a novel method of diagnosis that is based on safe and noninvasive echographic imaging of the heart. This method aims to measure minute natural vibrations of the heart wall. The research focuses to understanding and interpreting these vibrations to deduce the stiffness of heart wall. Experimental validation in both a laboratory environment and in three hospital centers will show its applicability.

Heart failure poses a large burden on patients and healthcare, largely because heart failure patients have low fitness and require frequent hospitalisation for close monitoring. In CardiacCare@Home, researchers work together with patients, doctors, industry, and others to develop technology for home-based monitoring of cardiac function and rehabilitation. This approach facilitates early detection of worsening of cardiac function, which allows doctors to rapidly alter treatment and prevent hospitalisation. Moreover, home-based rehabilitation will improve patients’ fitness levels. Technological innovations will facilitate a new care path that improves patients’ quality of life and lower socio-economic costs, and lower burden for hospital staff.

Language comprehension and production rely on accessing linguistic information in memory, a process strongly influenced by contextual information. Efficient use of context to guide memory access can be disrupted following brain damage, especially to the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). The aim of the present proposal is to define the neural mechanism supporting context-driven memory access in language. In two studies, I will investigate different aspects of this mechanism. In one study, I will record electroencephalogram from patients with focal PFC lesion to investigate how critical the involvement of lateral PFC is for exploiting semantic context to guide memory access, and whether and how the lateral PFC reorganises after stroke to support contextual processing in language. Furthermore, using signals recorded directly from the brain surface with high temporal and spatial resolution (electrocorticography), I will examine how and when neuronal groups in PFC and left temporal cortex interact, and how semantic context facilitates this interaction and the access to linguistic representations in memory. These two studies employ an exciting combination of lesion-electroencephalography and electrocorticography to advance our understanding of PFC involvement in contextual processing in language, with potential relevance to clinical applications in the case of language impairment after stroke.