Category: Health

CompletedHealth

NeLL

National eHealth Living Lab

Duration: 07/2019 – 11/2021 Funding: EFRO

Partners: LUMC, NeLL, Sense Health, Vital10, TNO, Holland Health Data Corporatie, PsyQ, Pacmed, Zorg&Zekerheid, Zilveren Kruis, Zorginstituut Nederland, Gemeente Leiden

NeLL

NeLL is a joint undertaking by e-health companies, research organizations, and several reimbursement companies, led by the eponymous Nationaal eHealth Living Lab, a spin-off of the Leiden University Medical Center. The goal of the project is to speed the development, validation, and reimbursement of promising e-health solutions through the creation of best practices distilled from the collective expertise of the project partners and expert groups.

The above will result in the creation of new models for the use of big data by existing and new e-health solutions, the validation of e-health solutions using new research methods to replace the current standard of randomized controlled trials which take a long time to yield results and are not always suited to technology, and the creation of structural reimbursement models that create room for technology by focusing on quantifiable output measures.

Contribution

Almende will further develop the concept of a 'diagnosis-technology combination', a concept we originated as a logical evolution of the 'diagnose-behandelcombinatie' (DBC) common in Dutch healthcare. Under this approach, which will be created in close collaboration with the various stakeholder groups in the project, we want to create structural reimbursement schemes based on common characteristics of technology (for instance; administration, communication, monitoring) which have been proven beneficial to treatments. This will then allow other e-health developers to more easily get their technology reimbursed, thus speeding the adoption of e-health by the market.

Results

Technology can often increase the efficiency of treatments as well as make them more personalised and flexible, but the adoption of e-health solutions is still very slow. With NeLL, Almende hopes to accelerate the adoption of e-health in the Dutch healthcare market. Apart from benefiting our own spin-off companies active in the e-health and healthcare domains, we believe that the entire healthcare system will benefit from the adoption of high-quality e-health solutions making use of the best practices developed in this project.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 31-07-2020 0

CompletedHealth

VARUS

Virtual Reality platform for Ultimate Self-management

Duration: 03/2020 – 03/2022 Funding: MIT R&D cooperation

Partners: SyncVR

VARUS

Virtual Reality applications are becoming more commonplace for educational and recreational purposes, and also show great promise for clinical purposes. Common conditions such as chronic lower back pain, functional abdominal pain and irritable bowel syndrome affect thousands of patients, and could be managed more effectively through the use of VR, either by doing exercises that gradually improve the range of head and neck motion, or by offering a distraction from pain or discomfort during treatment or at home. The VARUS project was spearheaded by SyncVR and Almende to take advantage of this possibility.

The goal of VARUS is to create dedicated VR interventions for the aforementioned conditions and goals, making use of the data that VR goggles and peripheral devices (such as gloves) collect to improve the effectiveness of individual apps. This will be achieved through the development of a common module that collects and analyses medically relevant data, and makes conclusions available through an API.

Contribution

Almende will be principally responsible for the development of the common data module which collects and analyses medically-relevant data originating from onboard sensors, such as range of motion, body position, and rate of breathing. This data will be used to create a personal model for each user so improvements may be tracked, regardless of which app is being used at the time. By doing so, more data is collected which facilitates treatment even in the home setting.

Results

Almende has considerable experience creating common data platforms, such as the CommonSense platform developed in the past. This project represents a new application domain for this technology, as current VR goggles are very app-focused and do not offer generic modules that run in the background. We expect that the common data module will find other use cases in VR-focused research projects, and the VR technology itself could be useful for expanding our 3D-simulation expertise.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 28-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

FoodFriend

Food Friend

Duration: 10/2019 – 10/2022 Funding: ITEA3

Partners: Evalan, Maastricht Instruments, Maastricht University, MedVision, Noldus, Danone Nutricia, BEIA

FoodFriend

FoodFriend is an ITEA3-5 project with consortia in The Netherlands and Romania. The goal of the Food Friend project is to develop a complete toolset, consisting of hardware, software and methodologies, that can automatically measure a person’s food intake with a minimum of required user input and turn it into personalised and actionable feedback. The system can be used by care professionals, research institutions, caterers or home users to get a better overview of a person’s dietary behaviour.

The Dutch use case is provided by Nutricia, and has to do with building a detailed nutritional profile and associated recommendations using data obtained from enteral nutrition pumps, which are being used to treat malnutrition in hospitals. Using data from these pumps, a personalized decision support engine will be developed which tracks the nutrients a patient receives and provides them and their professional with advice. The goal of this system is to improve treatment adherence and outcomes, and provide more high-quality data to clinical decision makers and dieticians, who can use this information to formulate better, more personalized treatment plans.

Contribution

Almende will be primarily responsible for the data analysis part of the project, arriving at personal nutrition advice from raw nutritional data of enteral nutrition pumps, which will be used to create a personal network of nutrients that will be correlated with the patient's condition over time. Results of this analysis will be visualized in a dashboard for patients and professionals.

Results

The project builds on expertise we have obtained in the past, working with medical data to draw conclusions and generate recommendations to inform future decision making. The project provides an interesting application area for neural networks which we have not explored before, but could provide promising applications for personal nutrition networks in other research projects.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 28-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

IUALL

Interaction for Universal Access

Duration: 10/2011 – 10/2015 Funding: COMMIT

Partners: Universiteit Twente, TU Delft, Thales, TNO, Politie, Broadfield Security Services, Cinop, Cybermind, KITT Engineering, Noldus, Re-lion, T-Xchange, Vicar Vision

IUALL

The IUALL (I, You, All) project started from the idea that anybody should be able to interact with computer systems. Universal Access calls for systems that are designed also for people with, for instance, low-literacy skills, small children, those living outside their native country, the elderly and even those with severe disabilities. The project approached this design challenge in two ways. First by investigating technology with social intelligence and second by investigating and producing tools for IT designers to help them design for all.

As a test-case, the project resulted in a mixed reality learning environment, where people can learn about a new neighbourhood. Users can navigate through a digital environment, adding information, such as text, video and pictures, but also subjective information about social benefits and risks. Other users can thus learn not only about physical aspects and facts, but also about the social environment.

Contribution

Almende contributed its expertise in situational awareness and interpreting sensor data. Using smartphones and ambient sensors, information about people and their surroundings will be collected and interpreted. The CommonSense platform developed by spin-off company Sense Observation Systems was used to collect and share these data between participants.

Results

The project contributed to our expertise in using smartphones and ambients sensors to gather contextual information about people's states and the situational aspects influencing it, which had interesting applications for behavior change. Our spin-off company Sense Observation Systems applied this expertise further, in practical behavior change applications for health and wellbeing.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 28-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

SWELL

Smart Reasoning Systems for Wellbeing at Work and at Home

Duration: 10/2010 – 10/2015 Funding: COMMIT

Partners: TNO, Radboud Universiteit, Universiteit Twente, Novay, Roessingh R&D, Philips, Noldus, Sense Labs

SWELL

The SWELL project aimed to keep employees happy and healthy in the workplace, increasing productivity and stimulating general well-being. This involved reducing both mental and physical stress and stimulating well-being and ‘well-working’. The project partners proposed to increase well-being by monitoring an individual’s activities and health status, and coaching them in order to stimulate healthy and productive behaviour. The project specifically targeted (nomadic) knowledge workers, which means that their working environment can be either in the office, at home, or anywhere else.

The activities monitored ranged from physical activities such as moving around and deep concentration, to patterns of information access for working, personal, or entertainment purposes. Monitoring is achieved using advanced sensing and reasoning techniques. The collected information is used to provide users with feedback and suggestions to avoid both physical and mental stress. This functionality is implemented as an unobtrusive coach or assistant that is tailored to the context and personality of the individual user.

Contribution

In May 2013, Almende and its daughter company Sense Observation Systems stepped into the project, taking over the role of Ericsson. Sense provided their knowledge on interpreting raw sensor data in order to recognise different activities. They used their generic platform CommonSense to gather and manage all sensor data collected during the project. Almende was the leader of WP6 – Well-being applications for mental lifestyle changes. In this work package, we developed an integrated application for demonstration and validation purposes.

Results

The project has already yielded valuable results about the workings of indoor localisation based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) in practical settings (both at home and in the hospital). Furthermore, the application of Crownstone in a health setting has yielded insights about the added value of data gathered by the Crownstone for the health professional. For instance, by monitoring use of certain electrical devices, a health professional can determine whether someone is following a normal daily routine or requires help.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 28-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

SENSEi

Sensor-based Engagement for improved health

Duration: 01/2014 – 03/2019 Funding: COMMIT

Partners: Infosys, VU Amsterdam, Universiteit Twente, Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Sense Observation Systems

SENSEi

Our society faces serious risks caused by people’s excessive food intake combined with lack of exercise. Medical issues such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure must be a top priority if we wish to successfully maintain our welfare state. Experts believe the solution to these health problems lies in preventive care; using behavioural intervention techniques to encourage people to take up physical exercise, improve their diet, and most importantly, to keep up their newly adopted positive behaviour. The project Sense Driven Coaching for Healthy Living uses sensor technology and ICT systems to monitor physical, mental and social well-being, and to stimulate people by giving them personalized and contextualized feedback in real time.

The project takes an integrated approach, combining widely available devices, such as smartphones and sports trackers to monitor physical, mental and social health. Currently available health trackers and coaching applications only track single aspects of health (weight, walking, diet) and give feedback based on static perimeters.

Contribution

Almende developed a pattern analytics framework in the cloud, in order to be able to analyze the data collected from the various sensors in smartphones and wearables. The analysis will be used to provide real time, contextualized feedback via the coaching application.

Results

Almende’s spin-off company Sense Observation Systems (and later Sense Health) used the algorithms developed in the project to augment their own digital coaching applications, introducing mechanics to automatically track behaviour such as physical activity and sleep from sensors in the smartphone.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 22-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

SALIG++

Smart Assisted Living involving Informal care Givers

Duration: 06/2013 – 06/2016 Funding: AAL

Partners: Stockholm University, TU Delft, HI iberia, Divitel, PIAP, SLL, Actimage

SALIG++

Demographics in Western countries are changing radically. People live longer (though not necessarily healthier) lives; the average age of our population grows higher, while the size of the working population diminishes; and family structures change due to young professionals moving away from their home towns. All these shifts have major consequences for the cost and the organisation of elderly care. Elderly people prefer to live in their own home for as long as possible, but they need a lot of care and help to do so.

The SALIG++ project partners developed a modular, heterogeneous system, consisting of non-instrusive hardware such as a smart TV, wrist-worn smartphone, 3D cameras and embedded sensors, combined with posture recognition software, text-to-speech applications and learning algorithms to detect Activities of Daily Life. The SALIG++ systems supports bidirectional awareness and interaction: the 3D cameras and TV can be used to be virtually ‘present’ in the home of the elderly. This allows family members and caretakers to have close, personal interaction with their parent/client, even at a distance.

Contribution

Almende was most actively involved in the “Awareness and Well-Being Support Applications” work package. This WP involves using various sensors and cameras to track elderly people indoors and to recognize activities (cooking, cleaning, sleeping) and events (fall detection). 3D-modeling was used to visualize these detected activities to caretakers.

Results

The project generated valuable insights on the detection of Activities of Daily Life, which have been re-used in other projects in healthcare. It also presented the new challenge of extracting valuable patterns from sources which are as unobtrusive as possible, to ease the burden of installation and the threshold for user adoption.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 22-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

EWiDS

Extreme Wireless Distributed Systems

Duration: 10/2011 – 10/2015 Funding: COMMIT, FES-subsidy for ICT

Partners: VU Amsterdam, Devlab, Thales, TU Delft

EWiDS

The EWiDS project developed and tested large-scale wireless (sensor/actuator) networks to be used in practical applications such as crowd control or assisted living. These networks were meant for scenarios in which (large groups of) people need to be monitored and managed, for instance in busy areas such as museums and train stations, or simply at home.The aim was to improve safety and comfort of individuals.

The central research question for the project was how to devise a large-scale collaborative network of small, highly mobile, wireless devices, which collect, disseminate, aggregate and process information within the network, in order to take independent, informed decisions and to provide instant feedback to its users.

Challenges were scaling up solutions for the deployment of wireless distributed sensor/actuator systems. Issues to be addressed include: ease of installation, (self-)configuration and maintenance; ease of application development and deployment, hiding complexities of the network; and harnessing the behavior of a large network of relatively primitive nodes (constraining the emergent behavior).

Contribution

Almende contributed with our expertise in installing and utilizing large-scale networks of MyriaNed sensor nodes, as well as aggregating and analyzing the data resulting from these nodes into insights and visualizations which can be relayed back to the user to effectuate behavior change.

Results

The project contributed to our expertise in managing large-scale sensor networks in practical, real world settings and using the data to map complex behavior flows. Specifically, we gained insights on the importance of ease of installation and maintenance for sensors deployed at such a scale.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 22-04-2020 0

CompletedEnergyHealth

PERDYNKA

Persoonlijk Dynamisch licht en binnenklimaat voor kantoren

Duration: 01/2018 – 09/2020 Funding: TKI Urban Energy 2017

Partners: Huygen Installatie Adviseurs, Philips, TU Eindhoven, Universiteit Maastricht

PERDYNKA

Office buildings are generally climatized in a uniform fashion during working hours, which results in higher energy usage than necessary. A constant temperature is equated to a higher experience of comfort by users, but there is a large amount of individual variation in experienced comfort. Furthermore, comfort should not be seen as a synonym for health. Research by the University of Maastricht shows that exposure to mildly cold temperatures can significantly improve people’s health by activating brown adipose tissue and improving glucose levels. DYNKA adds the dimension of light to this equation as another factors which can influence health. Research has shown that varying light levels can positively affect the circadian rhythm, comfort, alertness, and general health of workers, while simultaneously lowering energy consumption.

PERDYNKA builds upon the project DYNKA by creating technology targeted at the individual user, which enable them to exert some degree of control on the system to further personalize its parameters to their own experience of comfort. These manual adjustments can also provide input for the system when it comes to learning about optimal temperature and lighting conditions, as well as lowering the adoption threshold from the user’s perspective by giving them back some control.

Contribution

Almende develops a software platform that can dynamically control the light and temperature in an office building based on principles of self-learning and self-organization, as well as manual input from individual users, and deploy said platform in an experimental pilot setting over the course of the project.

Results

The project represents a bridge between the health and energy domains, both of which are highly relevant for Almende. We expect to be able to apply the insights and tools developed in the project in other energy-related projects, specifically when it comes to using self-learning systems to optimize energy usage over time. Finally, the insights from the personalization module will be useful in mapping individual preference levels.

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 22-04-2020 0

CompletedHealth

SEDECR

SMART en Duurzame E-Zorg Concepten Rotterdam

Duration: 01/2015 – 08/2019 Funding: EFRO – Kansen voor West

Partners: Consyst, Hogeschool Rotterdam, Laurens, Sense, WDTM, Eurocom

SEDECR

The goal of SEDECR is to create a dynamic, self-learning ICT system that can be used to improve safety and self-sufficiency of patients. The ICT system consists of different components that are concerned with fire safety, usage of electrical equipment, vital functions, (in)activity, and presence of people. The goal behind the system is to provide better monitoring of patients in intramural and home settings, allowing health workers to raise alarms, or let the system do so automatically based on data.

The system will be tested in various ‘Living Labs’ in Rotterdam which simulate various care settings, such as a physical rehabilitation hospital and a simulated home environment for elderly people.

Contribution

Almende's contribution to SEDECR is to provide technology and hardware which can be used to perform indoor localisation and actuation of electrical equipment to ensure safety. For this we have developed the Crownstone, which is being commercialized by one of our spin-off companies.

Results

More info?

Need specific information regarding the project? Please contact our senior consultant for more information.

Jan Kraaijeveld

Senior consultant

+31 (0)10 404 9444

jan@almende.com

Kevin Keijzer 22-04-2020 0

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