Jildau Bouwman new professor by special appointment
Jildau Bouwman has been named as professor by special appointment of the chair ‘Remote Health Monitoring’ at Leiden University. The systems biologist and TNO Digital Health Innovation figurehead will investigate how digital solutions can contribute to better healthcare at home. ‘Home care is often more comfortable, more effective, and relieves pressure on the healthcare system.’
Independently when possible, at home when possible, and digitally when possible. This is a key principle in the government’s healthcare policy. It also highlights that artificial intelligence should help address systemic healthcare challenges. To achieve this, innovations are essential, as well as data accessibility and strong collaboration with data users (citizens, informal caregivers, and healthcare professionals).
Bouwman’s chair focuses on digital solutions in healthcare. These innovations can help prevent diseases or enable remote care—crucial for ensuring accessible and sustainable healthcare in the future.
What defines health?
To gain a clear understanding of someone’s health, a broad range of measurements is needed, especially when someone suffers from multiple conditions. These data come from clinical practice and research but increasingly also from the patients themselves, for example, through smartwatches. The challenge is how to ethically reuse these data to develop a learning healthcare system.
Bouwman: ‘Health isn’t just about regulating blood sugar levels; it’s about maintaining a balance between various processes in our body. To get a clear picture, we need to monitor multiple parameters—preferably continuously.’
‘We aim to explore how we can responsibly combine patient health data with biological parameters from other research’
Which advice works for me?
Whether medical advice is suitable depends on a person’s genes, environment, and medical history. Personal preferences and surroundings also determine whether someone can follow a recommendation. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help tailor personalised health advice.
AI can structure and integrate data from different sources to support accurate diagnosis and make recommendations relevant to an individual. AI can also assist in maintaining adherence to advice—just as TikTok keeps children engaged with dance videos, but in an ethically responsible way.
The goal is to provide personalised treatment advice—whether based on medication, lifestyle, or a combination of both. However, this requires further research, as Bouwman explains: ‘We aim to explore how we can responsibly combine patient health data with biological parameters from other research.’
LACDR and TNO
Through this chair, LACDR and TNO will jointly investigate how patients can receive personalised health advice based on broad diagnostics. The advice will range from medication use to lifestyle interventions.
The chair is part of the ‘Metabolomics and Analytics Centre’ (MAC) within LACDR. Together, they will work on FAIR data within the Leiden Institute of FAIR and Equitable Science (LIFES) and the development of new diagnostics and interventions.
TNO and MAC have collaborated for some time in the field of data and reliable data usage. For example, in the C4yourself project, they examined how personal health data could be made available for research through a personal health environment (PHE), whether long-COVID patients were willing to participate, and under what conditions.
Thomas Hankemeier, professor at LACDR, is enthusiastic about Bouwman’s appointment: ‘Jildau’s research aligns with our ambition to use biochemical profiles, individual wearables, and other data to improve diagnostics, personalise treatments, and prevent diseases. Her work will also enable us to develop new interventions. Additionally, her appointment strengthens the strategic collaboration between LACDR and TNO, and we look forward to further fruitful cooperation at the Leiden Bio Science Park.’