Wearables en apps
Making the invisible visible is an important first step in personalized healthcare, says Wopereis. “With wearables and apps you can show that your behavior influences your health. For example, your glucose level drops when you exercise and rises when you are stressed. So you make people aware of the consequences of their behavior, which helps with motivation.” TNO is currently working on smart wearable devices with highly advanced technology. So advanced that Wopereis is not yet allowed to say much about it. She does talk enthusiastically about another promising innovation: the 3D food printing machine. “This allows hospital patients coming from the ICU to receive a tailor-made food product, where the food is enriched with micro and macronutrients so that patients recover better and faster.”
Moonshot
Back to the ambition for 2030: halving the number of people with lifestyle-related diseases. Suzan Wopereis: “Think of it as a ‘moonshot’ that shows a lot of urgency. Just like with the climate crisis, we really have to do something now. Otherwise it would be impossible for us to keep healthcare going.” At the same time, much has already been achieved. Together with LUMC and the Diabetes Fund, TNO founded Lifestyle4Health. Wopereis: “With this initiative we want to give lifestyle medicine a prominent place in medical research, education and the treatment of diseases. All academic hospitals in the Netherlands are now connected, as are many private partners, including pharmaceutical companies such as Novo Nordisk and Roche, as well as 270 lifestyle pharmacists.”
There is now also support from the government. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has allocated 300 million to implement lifestyle interventions in our healthcare by 2025. Wopereis speaks about a unique transformation. “This public-private partnership is the only one in the world. We are really at the forefront in the Netherlands when it comes to tackling lifestyle-related diseases.”
Lifestyle in a jar
Wopereis finds it hopeful and smart that pharmaceutical companies also support the lifestyle approach. “Pharmacists often see that their medicines end up in groups for which they were not initially intended. Think of GLP1 agonists that people use to easily lose weight. With personalized lifestyle therapy you give these people a healthier life without expensive medications.” Wopereis does see opportunities for ‘lifestyle in a jar’: lifestyle advice as a supplement to medicine. “Think of it as a digital prescription, where you as a patient can see in an app which lifestyle and nutrition optimize the effect of the medicine.” By using Apps and wearables, pharmaceutical companies receive valuable information that contributes to the faster and more efficient development of medicines in a real-life setting. Finally, Wopereis thinks that medicines should and can be made more personal. “Finding the ‘magic bullet’ is becoming increasingly difficult for pharmaceutical companies. By using technology that makes personalized healthcare possible, you can also offer medicines that no longer follow the traditional ‘one-size-fits-all’ principle. It is high time for more innovation in pharmaceuticals.”
2023-11-28 11:00:08
#healthy #lifestyle #medicine #TNO
